Arbeitspapier
Screening, Competition, and Job Design
In recent decades, many firms offered more discretion to their employees, often increasing the productivity of effort but also leaving more opportunities for shirking. These “high-performance work systems” are difficult to understand in terms of standard moral hazard models. We show experimentally that complementarities between high effort discretion, rent-sharing, screening opportunities, and competition are important driving forces behind these new forms of work organization. We document in particular the endogenous emergence of two fundamentally distinct types of employment strategies. Employers either implement a control strategy, which consists of low effort discretion and little or no rent-sharing, or they implement a trust strategy, which stipulates high effort discretion and substantial rent-sharing. If employers cannot screen employees, the control strategy prevails, while the possibility of screening renders the trust strategy profitable. The introduction of competition substantially fosters the trust strategy, reduces market segmentation, and leads to large welfare gains for both employers and employees.
- Language
-
Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: Munich Discussion Paper ; No. 2010-7
- Classification
-
Wirtschaft
Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
Economics of Contract: Theory
- Subject
-
job design
high-performance work systems
screening
reputation
competition
trust
control
social preferences
complementarities
Arbeitsgestaltung
Kooperative Führung
Leistungsbeurteilung
Vertrauen
Wettbewerb
Reputation
Prinzipal-Agent-Theorie
Soziale Wohlfahrtsfunktion
Test
- Event
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Bartling, Björn
Fehr, Ernst
Schmidt, Klaus M.
- Event
-
Veröffentlichung
- (who)
-
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät
- (where)
-
München
- (when)
-
2010
- DOI
-
doi:10.5282/ubm/epub.11312
- Handle
- URN
-
urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-11312-2
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Bartling, Björn
- Fehr, Ernst
- Schmidt, Klaus M.
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät
Time of origin
- 2010
Other Objects (12)
Screening, Competition, and Job Design
Screening, Competition, and Job Design: Economic Origins of Good Jobs
Screening, Competition, and Job Design Economic Origins of Good Jobs
Screening, competition, and job design: economic origins of good jobs
Abgangszeugnis Ernst Fehr
On the economics and biology of trust
On the Economics and Biology of Trust
Fairness and Contract Design
Competition and relational contracts: the role of unemployment as a disciplinary device
Competition and Relational Contracts: The Role of Unemployment as a Disciplinary Device
When social forces remove the impact of competition: Social exchange in experimental labor markets
Behavioral constraints on the design of subgame-perfect implementation mechanisms
Screening, Competition, and Job Design
Screening, Competition, and Job Design: Economic Origins of Good Jobs
Screening, Competition, and Job Design Economic Origins of Good Jobs
Screening, competition, and job design: economic origins of good jobs
Abgangszeugnis Ernst Fehr
On the economics and biology of trust
On the Economics and Biology of Trust
Fairness and Contract Design
Competition and relational contracts: the role of unemployment as a disciplinary device
Competition and Relational Contracts: The Role of Unemployment as a Disciplinary Device
When social forces remove the impact of competition: Social exchange in experimental labor markets
Behavioral constraints on the design of subgame-perfect implementation mechanisms
Screening, Competition, and Job Design
Screening, Competition, and Job Design: Economic Origins of Good Jobs
Screening, Competition, and Job Design Economic Origins of Good Jobs
Screening, competition, and job design: economic origins of good jobs
Abgangszeugnis Ernst Fehr
On the economics and biology of trust
On the Economics and Biology of Trust
Fairness and Contract Design
Competition and relational contracts: the role of unemployment as a disciplinary device
Competition and Relational Contracts: The Role of Unemployment as a Disciplinary Device
When social forces remove the impact of competition: Social exchange in experimental labor markets