nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2016‒06‒04
eleven papers chosen by
Patrick Kampkötter
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

  1. Are gender differences in performance innate or socially mediated ? By Benyishay,Ariel; Jones,Maria Ruth; Kondylis,Florence; Mobarak,Ahmed Mushfiq
  2. Entrepreneurial Choices of Initial Human Capital Endowments and New Venture Success By Rocha, Vera; van Praag, Mirjam C.; Folta, Timothy B.; Carneiro, Anabela
  3. Profit Sharing and Peer Reporting By Carpenter, Jeffrey P.; Robbett, Andrea; Akbar, Prottoy
  4. Significance on Organizational Performance of Global MNCs: Management Development, Human Resource System, or Employee Engagement? By Lai Wan Hooi; Seyed Abdorreza Payambarpour
  5. Liquidity, Information Aggregation, and Market-Based Pay in an Efficient Market By Calcagno, Riccardo; Heider, Florian
  6. Natural Groups and Economic Characteristics as Driving Forces of Wage Discrimination By Thorsten Chmura; Sebastian J. Goerg; Pia Weiss
  7. Inter-generational Effects of Early Childhood Shocks on Human Capital: Evidence from Ethiopia By Tafere, Kibrom
  8. Challenges of Human Capital Development in Islamic Administration Institutes in Malaysia (IAM) By SA'ADI AWANG; SITI ARNI BASIR
  9. When Time Binds: Returns to Working Long Hours and the Gender Wage Gap among the Highly Skilled By Cortes, Patricia; Pan, Jessica
  10. Talent management in conditions of globalization as a challenge for modern enterprises By Sylwia Nadolna
  11. The Value of Entrepreneurial Failures: Task Allocation and Career Concerns By Canidio, Andrea; Legros, Patrick

  1. By: Benyishay,Ariel; Jones,Maria Ruth; Kondylis,Florence; Mobarak,Ahmed Mushfiq
    Abstract: To explain persistent gender gaps in market outcomes, a lab experimental literature explores whether women and men have innate differences in ability (or attitudes or preferences), and a separate field-based literature studies discrimination against women in market settings. This paper posits that even if women have comparable innate ability, their relative performance may suffer in the market if the task requires them to interact with others in society, and they are subject to discrimination in those interactions. The paper tests these ideas using a large-scale field experiment in 142 Malawian villages where men or women were randomly assigned the task of learning about a new agricultural technology, and then communicating it to others to convince them to adopt it. Although female communicators learn and retain the new information just as well, and those taught by women experience higher farm yields, the women are not as successful at teaching or convincing others to adopt the new technology. Micro-data on individual interactions from 4,000 farmers in these villages suggest that other farmers perceive female communicators to be less able, and are less receptive to the women's messages. Relatively small incentives for rewards undo the disparity in performance by encouraging added interactions, improving farmers'accuracy about female communicators'relative skill.
    Keywords: Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems,Gender and Health,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems,Gender and Law,Housing&Human Habitats
    Date: 2016–05–31
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7689&r=hrm
  2. By: Rocha, Vera (Copenhagen Business School); van Praag, Mirjam C. (Copenhagen Business School); Folta, Timothy B. (University of Connecticut); Carneiro, Anabela (University of Porto)
    Abstract: The founder (team)'s human capital is a vital determinant of future firm performance. This is a stylized fact. Less is known about the effect of the human capital of the initial workforce hired by the founder(s). We study the performance consequences of a founder's choice of the initial workforce's human capital (quantity and quality), besides the human capital of the founder(s). The analysis is based on matched employer-employee data and covers about 5,300 startups in manufacturing industries founded by individuals coming from employment between 1992 and 2007. We acknowledge that initial hiring decisions are endogenous and correlated with the human capital of the founders and the ownership structure of startups (single founder versus team of founders). Given the stickiness of initial choices, human capital decisions at entry turn out to be a close to irreversible matter with significant implications for post-entry survival and growth of the firm.
    Keywords: human capital, entrepreneurship, startups, firm performance
    JEL: J24 L26 M13
    Date: 2016–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9919&r=hrm
  3. By: Carpenter, Jeffrey P. (Middlebury College); Robbett, Andrea (Middlebury College); Akbar, Prottoy (University of Pittsburgh)
    Abstract: Despite the "1/N problem" associated with profit sharing, the empirical literature finds that sharing profits with workers has a positive impact on work team and firm performance. We examine one possible resolution to this puzzle by observing that, although the incentive to work harder under profit sharing is weak, it might be sufficient to motivate workers to report each other for shirking, especially if the workers are reciprocally-minded. Our model provides the rationale for this conjecture and we discuss the results of an experiment that confirms that profit sharing is most effective when peer reporting is possible.
    Keywords: team production, profit sharing, peer reporting, reciprocity, experiment
    JEL: C92 J30 D20 M52
    Date: 2016–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9946&r=hrm
  4. By: Lai Wan Hooi (The University of Nottingham); Seyed Abdorreza Payambarpour (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia)
    Abstract: The present study examined the effect of management development and human resource system on organizational performance as well as the mediating role of employee engagement in the human resource system-organizational performance relationship. A cross-sectional design was adopted with data collected from a sample of 493 managerial staff of the first ten global multinational corporations listed by Fortune magazine 2013 through a survey questionnaire. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling and the results revealed that employee engagement was crucial in influencing organizational performance both directly and as a mediator. The findings also indicate that employee engagement was a more important predictor of organizational performance than management development or human resource system when these factors were taken together.
    Keywords: organizational performance, management development, human resource system, employee engagement, multinational corporation, structural equation modelling
    JEL: M10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:3606217&r=hrm
  5. By: Calcagno, Riccardo; Heider, Florian
    Abstract: This paper studies the usefulness of making the income of a CEO depend on the stock price of the firm he runs. We assume the stock market is efficient and find that other public information about CEO performance, e.g., accounting information, is not used to determine CEO pay. But because of the feedback loop between CEO actions and the stock price, the price does not fully reflect the consequences of CEO shirking for the value of the firm. The optimal incentive contract increases stock-based pay in order to increase the sensitivity of CEO income to shirking and thus deter it. This effect is stronger when traders have worse information, which can explain the prevalence of stock-based pay in hard-to-value firms. Our model derives a measure of the wedge between financial and economic efficiency, and generates new insights about the role of market conditions such as liquidity for optimal pay contracts.
    Keywords: efficient markets; information aggregation; liquidity; market-based pay
    JEL: D86 G14 G34
    Date: 2016–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11298&r=hrm
  6. By: Thorsten Chmura (Nottingham University, Business School); Sebastian J. Goerg (Department of Economics, Florida State University); Pia Weiss (Nottingham University, Business School)
    Abstract: We investigate whether the origin of an employee provides different motives for wage discrimination in gift-exchange experiments with students and migrant workers in China. In a lab and an internet experiment, subjects in the role of employers can condition their wages on the employees? home provinces. The resulting systematic differences in wages can be linked to natural groups and economic characteristics of the provinces. In-group favoritism increases wages for employees who share the same origin as the employer, while an increased probability of being matched with an employee with a different ethnicity reduces wages. Furthermore, wages in the laboratory increase with the actual wage level in the employees? home province. Nevertheless, employees? effort is not influenced by these variables; only the wage paid in the experiment influences effort.
    Keywords: wages, discrimination, social identity, natural groups, lab experiment, gift-exchange, migrant-workers, China
    JEL: C91 J31 J71 M52
    Date: 2016–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fsu:wpaper:wp2016_04_01&r=hrm
  7. By: Tafere, Kibrom
    Abstract: This is a preliminary work. Please do not cite.
    Keywords: Childhood shocks, Inter-generational transmission of shocks, famine, human capital, Ethiopia, International Development, Labor and Human Capital,
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea16:236056&r=hrm
  8. By: SA'ADI AWANG (UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA); SITI ARNI BASIR (UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA)
    Abstract: Human capital development is crucial in ensuring organizational excellence. Excellent organizations usually focus on the quality of their human capital. Excellent human capital management can be developed by learning, training, work experiences, human resource management and quality of service offered. Today, to ensure success of human capital, there are many challenges faced by an organization. The aim of this study is to explore human capital development in Islamic Administration Institutes in Malaysia (IAM). This study is important to identify challenges involved in human capital development program in IAM. The Malaysian Government is implementing public administration reformation agenda in the IAM which is an essential component of public administration involved in the renewal process. One of the reformations that can be made possible is by executing an effective human capital program. This paper is a qualitative study in which content analysis is used to analyze the content of previous literature, documents and reports related to topics being studied. The results show that human capital development in the IAM is actively implemented. IAM also faced a number of challenges in implementing the human capital development program. Preliminary findings from Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM) case studies found a number of challenges in developing the human capital. Some of the factors are financial, individual attitudes, lack of support on new ideas and environmental.
    Keywords: Human capital development, status, challenges, Islamic Administration Institutes, transformation.
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:3605499&r=hrm
  9. By: Cortes, Patricia (Boston University); Pan, Jessica (National University of Singapore)
    Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between gender differences in hours worked, the returns to working long hours, and the gender pay gap among highly educated workers. Using a cross-section of occupations, Goldin (2014) documents that occupations characterized by high returns to overwork are also those with the largest gender gap in earnings. To provide a causal link between the demand for long hours and how it relates to gender wage gaps, we exploit supply side shocks – generated by intercity variation in low-skilled immigrant flows – to examine whether reductions in the cost of supplying longer hours of work allow women to close the gap in hours of work and benefit from higher wages. We find that low-skilled immigration leads to a reduction in a city's gender gap in overwork, as well as in the gender pay gap in occupations that disproportionately reward longer hours of work.
    Keywords: gender wage gap, long hours, overwork, low-skilled immigration
    JEL: J16 J22
    Date: 2016–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9846&r=hrm
  10. By: Sylwia Nadolna (Nicolaus Copernicus University)
    Abstract: The aim of the article is a descriptive approach and present the growing importance of the - talent management concept in enterprises. The discussed issues were to explain the definition, the essence and objectives of talent management and visualize them on the background of the changes caused by globalization. The scientific studies on the subject of human resources management and globalization are used as a main sources of the article. The analysis of the literature and self-analysis of the opportunities and threats arising from the implementation of the concept of talent management are used as a research methods.. These considerations helped to justify the importance of this concept, as well as the legitimacy of its implementation in enterprise, since the chances exceeded the associated risks. In the first part of the article the definition of talent, and talent management are presented. Several different approaches within the meaning of the talent management process are cited, and also the most important of its components are listed. In the second part the essence and the main objectives of talent management are presented. The next part describes shortly an idea, and the essence of the globalization. The last part is devoted to the analysis of opportunities and risks associated with the talent management in the enterprise. It allows to illustrate of both of these factors and to show the value and legitimacy of the talent management concept. implementation.
    Keywords: globalization, talent, talent management, human resources
    JEL: J2 J24 M5 M54
    Date: 2016–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pes:wpaper:2016:no11&r=hrm
  11. By: Canidio, Andrea; Legros, Patrick
    Abstract: The task assignment that maximizes present expected output is not necessarily the most informative about an agent's comparative advantage at different tasks. Entrepreneurs are free to choose their task assignment-workers in firms are not. When labor market frictions are low, any surplus generated by a more informative task as- signment is captured by the worker, and firms maximize present expected output in their task assignment. Hence, agents may choose entrepreneurship to learn their comparative advantage. The opposite holds when labor market frictions are large. The model establishes a causal relation between the degree of labor market frictions, the value of entrepreneurial failures, the level of entrepreneurial activity, the degree of firms' short-termism, and the rate of within-firm talent discovery. The theoretical correlations between these variables are consistent with the evidence available for the US and continental Europe.
    Keywords: career concerns.; entrepreneurial failures; entrepreneurship; learning; organizational choice; task allocation
    JEL: D83 J24 J62 L26 M13
    Date: 2016–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11295&r=hrm

This nep-hrm issue is ©2016 by Patrick Kampkötter. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
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