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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Kevin Bauer; Michael Kosfeld; Ferdinand von Siemens |
| Abstract: | We study, theoretically and empirically, the effects of incentives on the self-selection and coordination of motivated agents to produce a social good. Agents join teams where they allocate effort to either generate individual monetary rewards (selfish effort) or contribute to the production of a social good with positive effort complementarities (social effort). Agents differ in their motivation to exert social effort. Our model predicts that lowering incentives for selfish effort in one team increases social good production by selectively attracting and coordinating motivated agents. We test this prediction in a lab experiment allowing us to cleanly separate the selection effect from other effects of low incentives. Results show that social good production more than doubles in the low-incentive team, but only if self-selection is possible. Our analysis highlights the important role of incentives in the matching of motivated agents engaged in social good production. |
| Keywords: | incentives, intrinsic motivation, self-selection, public service |
| JEL: | C91 D90 J24 J31 M52 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9207&r= |
| By: | Eyring, Henry; Ferguson, Patrick J.; Koppers, Sebastian |
| Abstract: | We use a field experiment in professional sports to compare effects of providing absolute, relative, or both absolute and relative measures in performance reports for employees. Although studies have documented that the provision of these types of measures can benefit performance, theory from economic and accounting literature suggests that it may be optimal for firms to direct employees’ attention to some types of measures by omitting others. In line with this theory, we find that relative performance information alone yields the best performance effects in our setting—that is, that a subset of information (relative performance information) dominates the full information set (absolute and relative performance information together) in boosting performance. In cross-sectional and survey-data analyses, we do not find that restricting the number of measures shown per se benefits performance. Rather, we find that restricting the type of measures shown to convey only relative information increases involvement in peer-performance comparison, benefitting performance. Our findings extend research on weighting of and responses to measures in performance reports. |
| Keywords: | Wiley deal |
| JEL: | M40 |
| Date: | 2021–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:111032&r= |
| By: | Ingrid Huitfeldt; Andreas R. Kostol; Jan Nimczik; Andrea Weber |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a new method to study how workers’ career and wage profiles are shaped by internal labor markets (ILM) and job hierarchies in firms. Our paper tackles the conceptual challenge of organizing jobs within firms into hierarchy levels by proposing a data-driven ranking method based on observed worker flows between occupations within firms. We apply our method to linked employer-employee data from Norway that records fine-grained occupational codes and tracks contract changes within firms. Our findings confirm existing evidence that is primarily based on case studies for single firms. We expand on this by documenting substantial heterogeneity in the structure and hierarchy of ILMs across a broad range of large firms. Our findings on wage and promotion dynamics in ILMs are consistent with models of careers in organizations. |
| Keywords: | internal labor markets, organization of labor, wage setting |
| JEL: | J31 J62 M50 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9227&r= |
| By: | Bloom, Nicholas; Manova, Kalina; Van Reenen, John; Sun, Stephen Teng; Yu, Zhihong |
| Abstract: | We study how management practices shape export performance using matched production-trade-management data for Chinese and American firms and a randomized control trial in India. Better-managed firms are more likely to export, sell more products to more destinations, and earn higher export revenues and profits. They export higher-quality products at higher prices and lower quality-adjusted prices. They import a wider range of inputs and inputs of higher quality and price, from more advanced countries. We rationalize these patterns with a heterogeneous-firm model in which effective management improves performance by raising production efficiency and quality capacity. |
| JEL: | R14 J01 L81 N0 |
| Date: | 2021–07–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:111559&r= |
| By: | Fabian Busch; Robert Fenge; Carsten Ochsen |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses how demographic changes of the labour force affect labour demand. Do firms adjust their hiring behaviour to an ageing society? Combining data at the firm level and the administrative district level, we analyse the hiring behaviour of firms. Our findings suggest that firms with an ageing workforce hire relatively more older workers. Since the willingness to hire older workers also increases with the share of older unemployed, the propensity to employ older people does generally rise with an ageing labour force. Also, part-time employment induces firms to engage more older workers but this effect disappears for large firms. In contrast, partial retirement regulations have a negative effect on hiring older workers which reveals unintended incentives of the German law on this matter. Finally, firms with a higher share of educated personnel demand more older workers. |
| Keywords: | ageing labour force, hiring of older workers, panel data models |
| JEL: | J11 J23 C33 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9219&r= |
| By: | Giacomo Calzolari; Leonardo Felli; Johannes Koenen; Giancarlo Spagnolo; Konrad O. Stahl |
| Abstract: | We study how informal buyer-supplier relationships in the German automotive industry affect procurement. Using unique data from a survey focusing on these, we show that more trust, the belief that the trading partner acts to maintain the mutual relationship, is associated with both higher quality of the automotive parts and more competition among suppliers. Yet both effects hold only for parts involving unsophisticated technology, not when technology is sophisticated. We rationalize these findings within a relational contracting model that critically focuses on changes in the bargaining power, due to differences in the costs of switching suppliers. |
| Keywords: | Relational Contracts, Hold-up, Buyer-Supplier Contracts, Bargaining Power |
| JEL: | D86 L14 L62 O34 |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2021_316&r= |
| By: | Peter J. Kuhn; Kailing Shen |
| Abstract: | When employers’ explicit gender requests were unexpectedly removed from a Chinese job board overnight, pools of successful applicants became more integrated: women’s (men’s) share of call-backs to jobs that had requested men (women) rose by 63 (146) percent. The removal ‘worked’ in this sense because it generated a large increase in gender-mismatched applications, and because those applications were treated surprisingly well by employers. The removal had little or no effect on aggregate matching frictions. The job titles that were integrated however, were not the most gendered ones, and were disproportionately lower-wage jobs. |
| JEL: | J16 J63 J71 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29116&r= |