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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Andy Chung (University of Reading, Global Labor Organization); Tin Cheuk Leung (Wake Forest University); James Reade (University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | Digital platforms expose workers and managers to immediate, public, and persistent evaluations from external audiences, creating a form of social pressure that may shape workplace decisions. We examine whether such digital social pressure predicts subsequent opportunity allocation and worker performance, using professional football as a high-frequency empirical setting. We link player-match data from Europe’s five major leagues to post-match Twitter commentary and construct measures of negative sentiment, toxicity, and racial abuse. Comparing players with themselves over time and teammates in the same current match, we find that greater negative sentiment is associated with a lower probability of appearing in the team’s next match. Toxicity shows a similar but less stable association, while racial-abuse intensity is imprecisely estimated when the measures enter jointly. By contrast, associations with performance conditional on a subsequent appearance are small and imprecise. Overall, the findings suggest that digital social pressure is reflected more strongly in the allocation of subsequent opportunities than in worker performance, showing how public evaluations generated outside formal organizational boundaries can become part of the reputational environment surrounding internal managerial decisions. |
| Keywords: | digital social pressure; online criticism; managerial decision-making; worker performance; social media; professional football; racial abuse |
| JEL: | J24 M54 D91 Z22 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:wfuewp:023574 |
| By: | Zixi Lei; Xiaomeng Chen; Wen Wen; Andrew Whinston |
| Abstract: | Remote work is a common practice of workplace flexibility enabled by digital infrastructure, yet its implications for firms' talent composition and organizational structure remain underexplored. This question is especially important for startups, which often operate with constraints in accessing talent through local labor markets. We focus on skill complementarity, a dimension of talent composition that is critical to startups' early-stage development. By integrating LinkedIn job postings, worker skills, and worker mobility data, we study the impact of remote work on skill complementarity in startups. We find that higher remote work intensity increases firm-level skill complementarity, primarily by helping startups recruit new workers whose skills better match the firms' hiring needs and diversify from the skill sets of existing employees. We further show that this shift in workforce composition carries organizational consequences: remote work is associated with greater organizational hierarchy through increased skill complementarity. These findings suggest that, for startups, remote work is not merely a flexibility policy but a hiring mechanism that helps young firms assemble complementary talent despite resource constraints. At the same time, this may push startups toward more hierarchical structures, which serve as formalized coordination mechanisms to effectively achieve the value of a more complementary workforce. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.02666 |
| By: | Beatrice Braut; Mariele Macaluso; Vincenzo Mollisi |
| Abstract: | Quiet quitting reflects a form of worker disaffection that operates along the intensive margin of labor supply rather than through job exit. We study how alternative workplace narratives shape workers' behavioral responses using a randomized survey experiment on a representative sample of employees in Italy and France. Respondents are exposed to empirically grounded moral framings of work emphasizing either social justice and collective rights or work organization and employment practices. We find that moral framings reallocate behavior across margins: justice-oriented narratives increase detachment while reducing passive disengagement, whereas organization-centered framing generates no systematic effects. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.27538 |
| By: | Sydnee Caldwell; Emily Oehlsen |
| Abstract: | We use randomized pay experiments among Uber drivers, paired with a natural experiment in access to a competitor, to examine how outside options shape labor supply to the firm. When hours are flexible, the firm-specific labor supply elasticity combines a market-hours component and a firm-substitution component. Access to a single competing platform nearly doubles drivers’ firm-specific elasticity and cuts the implied monopsony markdown from 68% to about 50%. The same experiments identify sex differences: women are about twice as elastic to the market as men, yet no less elastic to their employer. |
| JEL: | J2 J20 J42 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35626 |
| By: | Mizen, Paul; De Fraja, Gianni; Matheson, Jesse; Rockey, James; Taneja, Shivani; Thwaites, Gregory |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how the rise of working-from-home (WFH) affects compensation inequality. Using a novel survey, we find that the option to WFH is highly valued by workers (worth 8% of wages) but concentrated among higher earners, suggesting increased inequality. However, using a simple model where WFH and in-person workers are complements, we show that increased WFH leads to lower wages for WFH workers, potentially offsetting the benefits of WFH. Empirically, workers in WFH-capable occupations experienced 2–7% lower wage growth post-pandemic, consistent with the theory. Overall, we find no change in inequality but a substantial increase in compensation. |
| Keywords: | Remote working; Work-from-home; Inequality; Compensation; Pandemic; Perks |
| JEL: | J01 R12 |
| Date: | 2025–04–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2025-04 |
| By: | Jan van Ours (Erasmus University Rotterdam) |
| Abstract: | If the economic performance of a firm is disappointing, the manager may be replaced. Whether that improves performance is unclear. For regular firms, it is often difficult to study the causes and consequences of managerial replacement due to limited data availability. This is different for sports clubs, where high-quality data are available on a regular basis. The current paper studies managerial replacements in professional football in the Netherlands. Disappointment is measured by two indicators that use bookmaker expectations as a reference. Points surprise is based on actual results, while performance surprise is based on expected goals. The analysis shows that within-season managerial replacements are more likely when there is disappointment, that is, when both surprise indicators are negative. Match results improve after managerial replacement. However, this improvement is not causal: a counterfactual analysis suggests that match results would have improved even in the absence of managerial replacement. |
| JEL: | C20 L83 M12 Z20 |
| Date: | 2026–08–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260059 |
| By: | Daniel Goller; Samuel Lüthi; Stefan C. Wolter |
| Abstract: | Practical skills are widely believed to be a key determinant of labor market success, yet credible empirical evidence remains scarce, because these skills are occupation-specific, acquired primarily through workplace experience, and notoriously difficult to measure. We address these challenges using an exceptional dataset covering over 170 occupations. Our measure of practical skills is based on high-stakes expert evaluations of apprentices' performance in occupation-specific standardized practical examinations, conducted under authentic workplace conditions and lasting from several hours to several weeks. Combined with rich administrative data, this allows us to separate practical skills from general and vocational knowledge. We show that practical skills form a distinct dimension of human capital, only weakly correlated with traditional achievement measures. Practical skills are the strongest predictor of early labor market success, consistently associated with higher first-year earnings, lower NEET risk, greater retention by the training firm, and a higher likelihood of entering tertiary education. These relationships are robust across occupational task groups and by gender. Out-of-sample analyses show that practical skills substantially improve predictions beyond conventional educational achievement and background characteristics. |
| Keywords: | Return to skills, Practical skills, School-to-work transition, Human capital |
| JEL: | J24 I26 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26206 |
| By: | Thomas Buser (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | A large experimental literature shows that when given the choice between individual per- formance incentives and competitive incentives, men are typically more likely than women to choose competition. This finding of a robust gender difference in willingness to compete has sparked much follow-up research into the causes and consequences of individual and gender differences in willingness to compete. The aim of this chapter is to summarize these different strands of research and draw conclusions on what we can learn from them. I conclude that there is strong evidence that – underlying individual differences in willingness to compete – there is a “competitiveness†trait that is not well-captured by other traits and preferences, and somewhat less conclusive evidence that there is a gender difference in this trait. Willingness to compete – and the gender gap therein – varies strongly across countries, cultures and social contexts, suggesting that it can be influenced by them. Nevertheless, while the magnitude of the gender gap varies across contexts, men are more competitive than women in most countries and settings, suggesting that biology might play a role as well. Finally, there are strong indications that individual differences in preferences for competition are economically relevant: competitiveness predicts important life choices and labor market outcomes and can statistically explain gender differences in career outcomes. |
| JEL: | D91 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–09–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260063 |