Coordination under the shadow of career concerns

Arbeitspapier

To innovate, employees need to develop novel ideas and coordinate with each other to turn these ideas into better products and services. Work outcomes provide signals about employees' abilities to the labor market, and therefore career concerns arise. These can both be 'good' (enhancing incentives for effort in developing ideas) and 'bad' (preventing voluntary coordination). Our model shows how the firm designs its explicit incentive system and organizes work processes to take these conflicting forces into account. The comparative statics results suggest a link between the increased use of teams and recent changes in labor market returns to skills.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 4039

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economics of Contract: Theory ; Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs: General ; Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation; Networks ; Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior: General ; Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation ; Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights: General
• Subject: Career concerns ; group incentives ; knowledge work ; reputation ; teams ; Innovation ; Wissenstransfer ; Gruppenarbeit ; Karriereplanung ; Prestige ; Leistungsanreiz ; Theorie

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Koch, Alexander K. ; Morgenstern, Albrecht
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2009

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/35744
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-20090306325
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:46 AM CET