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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Khaliliaraghi, Negar (IFAU); Lundborg, Petter (Lund University); Vikström, Johan (IFAU) |
| Abstract: | Gender gaps in earnings persist even among high-skilled workers, partly because men and women often perform different tasks within and across jobs. We study a rare setting in which high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions, allowing us to assess gender differences in productivity and pay without confounding from task or client allocation. Using administrative data from the Swedish Public Employment Service, we exploit a rotation scheme that quasi-randomly assigns job seekers to employment caseworkers. We find that productivity differences are small: job seekers assigned to female and male caseworkers exit unemployment at similar rates, and hourly wages—conditional on productivity—are nearly identical across genders. Despite this, female caseworkers earn about 8 percent less per year, entirely due to differences in contracted and actual hours worked. We also find suggestive evidence that male caseworkers are more likely to be promoted than equally productive female colleagues. When tasks are standardized and performance is measured objectively, gender differences in productivity and hourly pay are minimal, while gaps in annual earnings and career progression persist. |
| Keywords: | gender gaps, productivity, wages, task allocation |
| JEL: | D84 I12 J12 J21 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18379 |
| By: | Sauermann, Jan (Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU), Copenhagen Business School; Institute of Labor Economics (IZA); ROA, Maastricht University; UCLS, Uppsala University.) |
| Abstract: | Do reciprocal workers have higher returns to employer-sponsored training? Using a field experiment with random assignment to training combined with survey information on workers’ reciprocal inclinations, the results show that reciprocal workers reciprocate employers’ training investments by higher post-training performance. This result, which is robust to controlling for observed personality traits and worker fixed effects, suggests that individuals reciprocate the firm’s human capital investment with higher effort, in line with theoretical models on gift exchange in the workplace. This finding provides an alternative rationale to explain firm training investments even with risk of poaching. |
| Keywords: | on-the-job training; reciprocity; worker performance; field experiment |
| JEL: | D03 J24 M53 |
| Date: | 2026–02–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2026_003 |
| By: | Virginia Minni (University of Chicago); Kieu-Trang Nguyen (University of Melbourne); Heather Sarsons (University of Chicago); Carla Srebot (University of British Columbia) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how managers’ gender attitudes shape workplace culture and gender inequality. Using data from a multinational firm operating in over 100 countries, we leverage cross-country manager rotations to identify the effects of male managers’ gender attitudes on gender pay gaps within a team. Managers from countries with one standard deviation more progressive gender attitudes reduce the pay gap by 5 percentage points (18%), largely through higher promotion rates for women. These effects persist after managers rotate out and are strongest in more conservative countries. Managers with progressive attitudes also influence the local office culture, as local managers who interact with but are not under the purview of the foreign manager begin to have smaller pay gaps in their teams. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture. |
| Keywords: | managers, gender gaps, corporate culture, multinationals |
| JEL: | J16 J24 F23 M14 M5 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2026-22 |
| By: | Rilke, Rainer (WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management); Sliwka, Dirk (University of Cologne) |
| Abstract: | A large body of research across management, psychology, accounting, and economics shows that subjective performance evaluations are systematically biased: ratings cluster near the midpoint of scales and are often excessively lenient. As organizations increasingly adopt large language models (LLMs) for evaluative tasks, little is known about how these systems perform when assessing human performance. We document that, in the absence of clear objective standards and when individuals are rated independently, LLMs reproduce the familiar patterns of human raters. However, LLMs generate greater dispersion and accuracy when evaluating multiple individuals simultaneously. With noisy but objective performance signals, LLMs provide substantially more accurate evaluations than human raters, as they (i) are less subject to biases arising from concern for the evaluated employee and (ii) make fewer mistakes in information processing closely approximating rational Bayesian benchmarks. |
| Keywords: | performance evaluation, large language models, signal objectivity, algorithmic judgment, Gen-AI |
| JEL: | J24 J28 M12 M53 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18371 |
| By: | Cieply, Isea (University of Goettingen); Barros, Laura (University of Goettingen); Silbersdorff, Alexander (University of Goettingen); Kneib, Thomas (University of Goettingen); Kis-Katos, Krisztina (University of Goettingen) |
| Abstract: | How large is the gender pay gap among university professors, and how do institutional pay-setting mechanisms shape this disparity? This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the gender pay gap among professors at a renowned German university. Using detailed human resources data for the time span 2013 to 2021, we document a statistically significant conditional gender pay gap in professorial salaries of 5.2%, after controlling for employment characteristics, socio-demographics, performance measures, and faculty and year fixed effects. Our findings show that these differentials can be attributed mainly to lower returns from retention negotiations, which have a particularly strong impact during the earlier stages of academic careers. These results highlight the importance of pay system designs in promoting gender equity in academia. |
| Keywords: | gender pay gap, gender economics, wage differentials, wage negotiations, professorial salaries |
| JEL: | E24 J01 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18376 |
| By: | Katharina Agethen (Paderborn University & OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts) |
| Abstract: | Managers often assume that collectively oriented employees perform well in organizations, yet prior meta-analyses have yielded inconsistent findings regarding the relationship between employee collective orientation and job performance. This study addresses these inconsistencies through an updated and comprehensive meta-analysis of 128 articles, comprising 144 samples and 390 effect sizes. Specifically, I examine how different conceptualizations and measures of collective orientation (global vs. work context-specific and unidimensional vs. multidimensional) as well as different performance types (general, in-role, and extra-role) moderate the relationship between collective orientation and job performance. Employing a three-level meta-analytic approach, the results reveal that collective orientation, overall, is positively related to job performance (r̅ = .17). Contrary to my expectations, global collective orientation (r̅ = .18) shows a stronger relationship with performance than work context-specific collective orientation (r̅ = .13), challenging prevailing assumptions about the need for context-specific measures. Multidimensional measures (r̅ = .21) further outperform unidimensional ones (r̅ = .14). Among the types of performance, collective orientation is most strongly associated with extra-role performance (r̅ = .19) compared to general (r̅ = .09) and in-role performance (r̅ = .08). These findings clarify long-standing inconsistencies in the literature and offer theoretical and practical implications. In particular, they inform human resource management practices related to employee selection and performance evaluation. |
| Keywords: | collective orientation, collectivism, team orientation, job performance, meta-analysis |
| JEL: | M54 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pdn:dispap:172 |