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.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Munich Discussion Paper ; No. 2010-7

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
Economics of Contract: Theory
Thema
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

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Bartling, Björn
Fehr, Ernst
Schmidt, Klaus M.
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät
(wo)
München
(wann)
2010

DOI
doi:10.5282/ubm/epub.11312
Handle
URN
urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-11312-2
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Bartling, Björn
  • Fehr, Ernst
  • Schmidt, Klaus M.
  • Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät

Entstanden

  • 2010

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