nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2024‒01‒01
nine papers chosen by
Patrick Kampkötter, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen


  1. The Efficacy of Tournaments for Non-Routine Team Tasks By Florian Englmaier; Stefan Grimm; Dominik Grothe; David Schindler; Simeon Schudy
  2. Does excess employment affect the relative performance evaluation usage in CEO turnover?Evidence from Chinese listed firms By Xinyi CAO; Norio SAWABE
  3. THE IMPACT OF HIGH TEMPERATURES ON PERFORMANCE IN WORK-RELATED ACTIVITIES By Matteo Picchio; Jan C. Van Ours
  4. The Hidden Costs of Choice in the Labor Market By Au, Pak Hung; Li, King King; Zhang, Qing; Zhu, Rong
  5. The Effects of Commuting and Working from Home Arrangements on Mental Health By Botha, Ferdi; Kabátek, Jan; Meekes, Jordy; Wilkins, Roger
  6. Reputational Concerns and Advice-Seeking at Work By Lea Heursen; Svenja Friess; Marina Chugunova
  7. What Makes Hiring Difficult? Evidence from Linked Survey-Administrative Data By Bertheau, Antoine; Larsen, Birthe; Zhao, Zeyu
  8. Does entrepreneur gender matter in SMEs performance? The role of innovations. By Alfonso Expósito; Juan A. Amparo Sanchis-Llopis; Juan A. Juan A. Sanchis-Llopis
  9. Twenty Years of Job Quality in OECD Countries: More Good News? By Clark, Andrew E.; Kozák, Michal

  1. By: Florian Englmaier (LMU Munich); Stefan Grimm (LMU Munich); Dominik Grothe (LMU Munich); David Schindler (Tilburg University); Simeon Schudy (LMU Munich)
    Abstract: Tournaments are often used to improve performance in innovation contexts. Tournaments provide monetary incentives but also render teams' identity and image concerns salient. We study the effects of tournaments on team performance in a non-routine task and identify the importance of these behavioral aspects. In a field experiment (n>1, 700 participants), we vary the salience of team identity, social image concerns, and whether teams face monetary incentives. Increased salience of team identity does not improve performance. Social image motivates the top performers. Additional monetary incentives improve all teams' outcomes without crowding out teams' willingness to explore or perform similar tasks again.
    Keywords: team work; tournaments; rankings; incentives; identity; image concerns; innovation; exploration; natural field experiment;
    JEL: C93 D90 J24 J33 M52
    Date: 2023–11–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:445&r=hrm
  2. By: Xinyi CAO; Norio SAWABE
    Abstract: This study investigates the application of Relative Performance Evaluation (RPE) theory on forced CEO turnover decisions in the context of Chinese listed firms. Using CEO dismissal data spanning from 2009 to 2019, we observe a negative correlation between industry peer performance and the likelihood of forced CEO turnover, which contradicts the assumption of RPE theory. Furthermore, we emphasize the significance of considering Non-Financial Performance Measures (NFPMs) in CEO turnover research. Our research reveals that the extent of excess employment is negatively associated with the probability of forced CEO dismissal, and it also affects how a firm responds to peer performance. Specifically, when firms exhibit high social performance, proxied by excess employment, they tend not to lay off more CEOs due to industry downturns. This study offers a potential explanation for Jenter and Kanaan (2015)’s puzzle of why firms terminate more CEOs when their industry experiences a recession. We argue that prior literature, which predominantly focuses on the relationship between financial performance and CEO turnover, may be incomplete. It is imperative to also account for the impact of NFPMs.
    Keywords: Consistency, Relative performance evaluation, excess employment, forced CEO turnover, Chinese listed firms
    JEL: G32 M21 M41
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kue:epaper:e-23-006&r=hrm
  3. By: Matteo Picchio (Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche); Jan C. Van Ours (Erasmus School of Economics and Tinbergen Institute, The Netherlands)
    Abstract: High temperatures can have a negative effect on work-related activities because workers may experience difficulties concentrating or have to reduce effort in order to cope with heat. We investigate how temperature affects performance of professional tennis players in outdoor singles matches in big tournaments. We find that performance significantly decreases with ambient temperature. This result is robust to including wind speed and air pollution in the analysis. There are no differences between men and women. However, there is some heterogeneity in the magnitude of the temperature effect in other dimensions. In particular, we find that the temperature effect is smaller when there is more at stake. Our findings also suggest that the negative temperature effect is smaller if the heat lasts, i.e. there is some adaptation to high temperatures.
    Keywords: Climate change, temperatures, tennis, performance, productivity.
    JEL: J24 J81 Q51 Q54
    Date: 2023–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anc:wpaper:484&r=hrm
  4. By: Au, Pak Hung (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology); Li, King King (Shenzhen University); Zhang, Qing (Hunan University); Zhu, Rong (Flinders University)
    Abstract: Freedom of choice is often thought to improve efficiency. We experimentally investigate the effect of giving workers a choice between compensation schemes with and without a CSR component (CSR/NoCSR) on labor market participation decision and work performance, compared to the alternative of exogenous assignment. Classical economic theory suggests that giving workers a choice should not reduce their performance. Our results show that there are hidden costs associated with the right of choice. When a worker is allowed to choose his or her compensation scheme, the labor market participation rate is significantly lower than when the same scheme is exogenously assigned. Work quality is also significantly lower for those who choose CSR, as well as for those who choose no CSR, than for those who are exogenously assigned to the same scheme.We propose a model of signaling with image concerns to explain why the freedom of choice may induce reduced participation and effort exertion of workers.
    Keywords: choice, signaling, image concerns, corporate social responsibility, labor, experiment
    JEL: M14 J01 C9 M52
    Date: 2023–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16623&r=hrm
  5. By: Botha, Ferdi (University of Melbourne); Kabátek, Jan (University of Melbourne); Meekes, Jordy (Leiden University); Wilkins, Roger (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research)
    Abstract: In this study, we quantify the causal effects of commuting time and working from home (WFH) arrangements on the mental health of Australian men and women. Leveraging rich panel-data models, we first show that adverse effects of commuting time manifest only among men. These are concentrated among individuals with pre-existing mental health issues, and they are modest in magnitude. Second, we show that WFH arrangements have large positive effects on women's mental health, provided that the WFH component is large enough. The effects are once again concentrated among individuals with pre-existing mental health issues. This effect specificity is novel and extends beyond Australia: we show that it also underlies the adverse effects of commuting time on the mental health of British women. Our findings highlight the importance of targeted interventions and support for individuals who are dealing with mental health problems.
    Keywords: mental health, commuting, working from home, unconditional quantile regression
    JEL: D1 I1 R41
    Date: 2023–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16618&r=hrm
  6. By: Lea Heursen (HU Berlin); Svenja Friess (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition/LMU Munich); Marina Chugunova (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)
    Abstract: We examine the impact of reputational concerns on seeking advice. While seeking can improve performance, it may affect how others perceive the seeker's competence. In an online experiment with white-collar professionals (N=2, 521), we test how individuals navigate this tradeoff and if others' beliefs about competence change it. We manipulate visibility of the decision to seek and stereotypes about competence. Results show a sizable and inefficient decline in advice-seeking when visible to a manager. Higher-order beliefs about competence cannot mediate this inefficiency. We find no evidence that managers interpret advice-seeking negatively, documenting a misconception that may hinder knowledge flows in organizations.
    Keywords: advice-seeking; reputational concerns; stereotypes; higher-order beliefs; knowledge flows; experiment;
    JEL: D16 D21 D83 D91 M51
    Date: 2023–11–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:447&r=hrm
  7. By: Bertheau, Antoine (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Larsen, Birthe (Copenhagen Business School); Zhao, Zeyu (University of Copenhagen)
    Abstract: We designed an innovative survey of firms and linked it to Danish administrative data to yield new insights about the factors that can influence firms’ hiring decisions. Several important findings stand out: (1) search and training frictions and economic uncertainty are as important as labor costs in hiring decisions ; (2) search and training frictions are more likely to affect younger and smaller firms; (3) uncertainty is more likely to affect hiring decisions in low-productivity firms; (4) thirty percent of firms prefer to hire already employed persons over the unemployed, because they believe that unemployed workers have lower abilities due to negative selection or skill depreciation during unemployment; and (5) these firms are more likely to report that labor market frictions and labor costs considerations discourage them from hiring.
    Keywords: Hiring
    JEL: J20 J21
    Date: 2023–12–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2023_020&r=hrm
  8. By: Alfonso Expósito ((University of Málaga, Spain). ORCID number: 0000-0002-9248-4879); Juan A. Amparo Sanchis-Llopis ((University of Valencia and ERICES, Spain). ORCID number: 0000-0002-0872-7859); Juan A. Juan A. Sanchis-Llopis ((University of Valencia and ERICES, Spain). ORCID number: 0000-0001-9664-4668)
    Abstract: This study explores whether there are significant differences between female- and male-led businesses in terms of the performance results they obtain from innovating. We use a sample of 1, 376 Spanish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to analyze the impact of entrepreneur gender on business performance considering the mediating effect of innovations, that is, the possibility that gender indirectly influences business performance by affecting the introduction of innovations. Using econometric techniques, we estimate discrete choice models to explore the relationship among gender, innovations and business’ performance. Our analysis is multidimensional in that we consider two types of performance indicators, financial and operational, and three types of innovations: product, process and organisational innovations. Our empirical findings show that, after controlling for other entrepreneurial and business characteristics, menled SMEs are more likely to obtain better performance from their innovations, and in particular, from their higher propensity to introduce process innovations, as compared to women-led SMEs. We extend existing empirical literature in the gender and entrepreneur research fields regarding the role of entrepreneur gender in the innovation-performance relationship, and contribute to the understanding of the role of gender in SMEs performance. Our study suggests the need to incorporate a gender perspective in those policies dealing with enhancing SMEs innovativeness and performance.
    Keywords: Gender of entrepreneur; small and medium-enterprises; innovations; financial performance; operational performance; bivariate probit model.
    JEL: C35 J16 F14 M21
    Date: 2023–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eec:wpaper:2308&r=hrm
  9. By: Clark, Andrew E. (Paris School of Economics); Kozák, Michal (University of Oslo)
    Abstract: The distribution of job quality across workers and the change in job quality over time can be measured by job-domain indices or single-index job-satisfaction. This paper takes both approaches to establish the evolution of job quality over a period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s in 13 OECD countries, using data from the three latest ISSP Work Orientation modules. The rise in job satisfaction from 1997 to 2005 has continued through 2015, despite the 2008 Great Recession. This improvement is also found in most of the job-outcome domains, despite some evidence of work intensification. Job security was the most-important job aspect every year, and the percentage of workers with secure jobs rose over time. There has been a small rise in the dispersion of job satisfaction, but the good news regarding better job quality over a 20-year period does not seem to be dampened by large changes in its inequality.
    Keywords: job quality, job satisfaction, ISSP
    JEL: J28 J3 J81
    Date: 2023–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16597&r=hrm

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