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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Addy, Samuel N.; Nzaku, Kilungu; Ijaz, Ahmad |
| Abstract: | Job satisfaction is an important measure of utility that employees derive from their jobs and is related to various features of the job such as pay, security, intrinsic values of work, working conditions, career growth opportunities, working hours, and the like. This paper analyzes the relationship between underemployment and overall job satisfaction among other personal and job characteristics of the workforce in Alabama using survey data from Alabama workforce development regions. A logistic model is used to analyze the determinants of job satisfaction in Alabama including underemployment. Estimation results show a negative relationship between underemployment and job satisfaction. Personal and work-related attributes such as education, age, work hours, and gender are also shown to influence employee job satisfaction. |
| Keywords: | Community/Rural/Urban Development, Industrial Organization, Labor and Human Capital, |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:saea12:119809&r=hrm |
| By: | Bandiera, Oriana (London School of Economics); Barankay, Iwan (University of Pennsylvania); Rasul, Imran (University College London) |
| Abstract: | Many organizations rely on teamwork, and yet field evidence on the impacts of team-based incentives remains scarce. Compared to individual incentives, team incentives can affect productivity by changing both workers' effort and team composition. We present evidence from a field experiment designed to evaluate the impact of rank incentives and tournaments on the productivity and composition of teams. Strengthening incentives, either through rankings or tournaments, makes workers more likely to form teams with others of similar ability instead of with their friends. Introducing rank incentives however reduces average productivity by 14%, whereas introducing a tournament increases it by 24%. Both effects are heterogeneous: rank incentives only reduce the productivity of teams at the bottom of the productivity distribution, and monetary prize tournaments only increase the productivity of teams at the top. We interpret these results through a theoretical framework that makes precise when the provision of team-based incentives crowds out the productivity enhancing effect of social connections under team production. |
| Keywords: | rank incentives, team-based incentives, teams, tournaments |
| JEL: | D23 J33 M52 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6279&r=hrm |
| By: | Görlitz, Katja (RWI); Tamm, Marcus (RWI) |
| Abstract: | This paper addresses the question to which extent the complementarity between education and training can be attributed to differences in observable characteristics, i.e. to individual, job and firm specific characteristics. The novelty of this paper is to analyze previously unconsidered characteristics, in particular, personality traits and tasks performed at work which are taken into account in addition to the standard individual specific determinants. Results show that tasks performed at work are strong predictors of training participation while personality traits are not. Once working tasks and other job related characteristics are controlled for, the skill gap in training participation drops considerably for off-the-job training and vanishes for on-the-job training. |
| Keywords: | training, personality traits, working tasks, Oaxaca decomposition |
| JEL: | I21 J24 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6278&r=hrm |
| By: | Ghazala Azmat; Nagore Iriberri |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on individuals' performance and affective response, under both piece-rate and flat-rate incentives. In a laboratory setup, agents perform a real effort task and when receiving feedback, they are asked to rate their happiness, arousal and feeling of dominance. Control subjects learn only their absolute performance, while the treated subjects additionally learn the average performance in the session. Under piece-rate, performance is 17 percent higher when relative performance feedback is provided. Furthermore, although feedback increases the performance independent of the content (i.e., performing above or below the average), the content is determinant for the affective response. When subjects are treated, the inequality in the happiness and the feeling of dominance between those subjects performing above and below the average increases by 8 and 6 percentage points, respectively. Under flat-rate, we do not find any effect on either of the outcome variables. |
| Keywords: | Relative performance, feedback, piece-rate, flat-rate, happiness |
| JEL: | C91 M52 D03 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1116&r=hrm |
| By: | D'Antoni, Jeremy M.; Mishra, Ashok K. |
| Abstract: | Farm operators and spouses have increasingly engaged in off-farm work in recent years. Many studies have analyzed the role of government payments; however, little is known about the impact of health insurance coverage. This study builds on previous literature by using copulas to test for dependence in the labor allocation decisions of the operator and spouse, addressing the importance of fringe benefits to the farm household, and determining how these considerations affect our knowledge of the impact of government payments on off-farm labor. The results indicate that the off-farm hours worked by the operator and spouse are dependent. We then find significant evidence of endogeneity in the health insurance coverage variable. Using the predicted probability of insurance coverage, we find a positive and highly significant relationship with the hours worked off-farm. Further, we find that both coupled and decoupled payments are negatively correlated with the hours worked off-farm. |
| Keywords: | Health insurance coverage, endogeneity, copula, off-farm labor supply, dependence, bivariate tobit, coupled farm programs payments, decoupled farm program payments, Agribusiness, Farm Management, Food Security and Poverty, Labor and Human Capital, Public Economics, C34, I13, J12, J22, J38, J43, Q12, Q18, |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:saea12:119646&r=hrm |
| By: | Marianna Marino (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,); Pierpaolo Parrotta (Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, Denmark); Dario Pozzoli (Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, Denmark) |
| Abstract: | We find evidence that workforce educational diversity promotes entrepreneurial behavior of employees as well as the formation of new firms, whereas diversity in demographics hinders transitions to selfemployment. Ethnic diversity favors entrepreneurship in financial and business services. |
| Keywords: | Labor diversity, entrepreneurship, transitions to self-employment |
| JEL: | C26 J24 L26 |
| Date: | 2012–01–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aah:aarhec:2012-04&r=hrm |
| By: | Thöni, Christian (University of St. Gallen); Gächter, Simon (University of Nottingham) |
| Abstract: | Substantial evidence suggests the behavioral relevance of social preferences and also the importance of social influence effects ("peer effects"). Yet, little is known about how peer effects and social preferences are related. In a three-person gift-exchange experiment we find causal evidence for peer effects in voluntary cooperation: agents' efforts are positively related despite the absence of material payoff interdependencies. We confront this result with major theories of social preferences which predict that efforts are unrelated, or negatively related. Some theories allow for positively-related efforts but cannot explain most observations. Conformism, norm following and considerations of social esteem are candidate explanations. |
| Keywords: | social preferences, voluntary cooperation, peer effects, reflection problem, gift exchange, conformism, social norms, social esteem |
| JEL: | C92 D03 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6277&r=hrm |