Public policy and downsizing decisions

Public policy ; Labor market ; Labor productivity

Examining the Incidence of Downsizing and Its Effect on Establishment Performance

The interest in examining job security and job stability has been driven in part by the phenomenon of downsizing. The distinctiveness of downsizing, as opposed to more traditional layoffs, is that the job cuts do not necessarily appear to be driven by shortfalls in demand but instead appear to be driven by the search for operating efficiencies. Despite the interest in downsizing, there has been essentially no serious investigation into its causes. I distinguish downsizing from job cuts associated with shortfalls in demand and find that employment and management practices over which employers have control, such as severance pay and profit sharing, are important predictors of subsequent downsizing and more general job losses. Surprisingly, excess operating capacity is not necessarily related to more general job losses at the establishment level. I also examine the relationship between both job losses associated with shortfalls in demand and downsizing and subsequent financial performance. The results suggest, among other things, that downsizing reduces labor costs per employee but also sales per employee. Job cuts associated with excess capacity appear to be somewhat more successful at improving sales per employee than is downsizing.

Technology and skill requirements: implications for establishment wage structures

Wages ; Human capital ; Technology ; Income distribution ; Labor market ; Regression analysis

Are Franchises Bad Employers?

Franchise jobs are often described as representing the epitome of the "low road" approach to managing employees: high turnover, little training, deskilled jobs, and little employee involvement, practices often seen as unsophisticated. Research on franchise operations suggests, however, that the basic operating principles and practices of franchises tend to be more sophisticated than those of equivalent independent operators. We might therefore expect their employee management practices to be more advanced as well, challenging the stereotype of franchise jobs. We use data from a national probability sample of establishments to examine the relationship between franchise status and employment practices. While descriptive statistics suggest that franchise operations use low road practices, once industry, size, and other control variables are included in the analysis, franchise operations appear on important dimensions to offer better jobs with more sophisticated systems of employee management than similar non-franchise operations.

The Path to the Top: Changes in the Attributes and Careers of Corporate Executives, 1980-2001

The analyses below compare the career histories and personal characteristics of the executives in the top ranks of the world's largest and most stable business operations, the Fortune 100, between 1980 and 2001. To our knowledge, there have been no prior studies of contemporary changes in the experience or attributes of executives beyond CEOs. In 2001, these executives were younger, more likely to be women, and less likely to have been Ivy League educated. Most important, they got to the executive suite about four years faster than in 1980 and did so by holding fewer jobs on the way to the top. (In particular, women in 2001 got to their executive jobs faster than their male counterparts --there were no women executives in the Fortune 100 in 1980). Executives in 2001 also spent about five years less in their current organization and were more likely to be hired from the outside than in 1980. Interestingly, the most stable firms the 26 that were in the Fortune 100 in both periods had just as much lifetime employment among executives in 2001 as in 1980, although changes in other aspects of careers were similar. Overall, the path to the executive suite and the attributes of the individuals who get there appear to have changed even in the largest and most stable business operations.

Employee Screening: Theory and Evidence

Arguably the fundamental problem faced by employers is how to elicit effort from employees. Most models suggest that employers meet this challenge by monitoring employees carefully to prevent shirking. But there is another option that relies on heterogeneity across employees, and that is to screen job candidates to find workers with a stronger work ethic who require less monitoring. This should be especially useful in work systems where monitoring by supervisors is more difficult, such as teamwork systems. We analyze the relationship between screening and monitoring in the context of a principal-agent model and test the theoretical results using a national sample of U.S. establishments, which includes information on employee selection. We find that employers screen applicants more intensively for work ethic where they make greater use of systems such as teamwork where monitoring is more difficult. This screening is also associated with higher productivity and higher wages and benefits, as predicted by the theory: The synergies between reduced monitoring costs and high performance work systems enable the firm to pay higher wages to attract and retain such workers. Screening for other attributes, such as cognitive ability, does not produce these results.

Employee Screening : Theory and Evidence

Arguably the fundamental problem faced by employers is how to elicit effort from employees. Most models suggest that employers meet this challenge by monitoring employees carefully to prevent shirking. But there is another option that relies on heterogeneity across employees, and that is to screen job candidates to find workers with a stronger work ethic who require less monitoring. This should be especially useful in work systems where monitoring by supervisors is more difficult, such as teamwork systems. We analyze the relationship between screening and monitoring in the context of a principal-agent model and test the theoretical results using a national sample of U.S. establishments, which includes information on employee selection. We find that employers screen applicants more intensively for work ethic where they make greater use of systems such as teamwork where monitoring is more difficult. This screening is also associated with higher wages, as predicted by the theory : The synergies between reduced monitoring costs and high performance work systems enable the firm to pay higher wages to attract and retain such workers. Screening for other attributes, such as work experiences and academic performance, does not produce these results.Employee Screening, Monitoring, Work Ethic, High Performance Work Practices, Principal-Agent Model

Employee Screening: Theory and Evidence

Arguably the fundamental problem faced by employers is how to elicit effort from employees. Most models suggest that employers meet this challenge by monitoring employees carefully to prevent shirking. But there is another option that relies on heterogeneity across employees, and that is to screen job candidates to find workers with a stronger work ethic who require less monitoring. This should be especially useful in work systems where monitoring by supervisors is more difficult, such as teamwork systems. We analyze the relationship between screening and monitoring in the context of a principal-agent model and test the theoretical results using a national sample of U.S. establishments, which includes information on employee selection. We find that employers screen applicants more intensively for work ethic where they make greater use of systems such as teamwork where monitoring is more difficult. This screening is also associated with higher productivity and higher wages and benefits, as predicted by the theory: The synergies between reduced monitoring costs and high performance work systems enable the firm to pay higher wages to attract and retain such workers. Screening for other attributes, such as cognitive ability, does not produce these results.

Do "High Performance" Work Practices Improve Establishment-Level Outcomes?

Interest in the potential effects of different systems for organizing work and managing employees on the performance of organizations has a long history in the social sciences. The interest in economics, arguably more recent, reflects a general concern about the sources of competitiveness in organizations. A number of methodological problems have confronted previous attempts to examine the relationship between work practices and the performance of firms. Among the most intractable has been a concern about establishing causation given heterogeneity biases in what have typically been cross-sectional data. The results from prior literature are suggestive of important productivity effects but remain inconclusive. To address the major methodological problems we use a national probability sample of establishments, measures of work practices and performance that are comparable across organizations, and most importantly a unique longitudinal design incorporating data from a period prior to the advent of high performance work practices. Our results suggest that work practices that transfer power to employees, often described as statistical case is weak. However, we also find that these work practices on average raise labor costs per employee. The net result is no apparent effect on efficiency, a measure that combines labor costs and labor productivity. While these results do not appear to be consistent with the view that such practices are good for employers, neither do they suggest that such practices harm employers. They are, however, consistent with the view that these practices raise average compensation and hence may be good for employees. Overall, then, the evidence suggests that firms can choose raise employee compensation without necessarily harming their competitiveness.

Employee Screening: Theory and Evidence

Arguably the fundamental problem faced by employers is how to elicit effort from employees. Most models suggest that employers meet this challenge by monitoring employees carefully to prevent shirking. But there is another option that relies on heterogeneity across employees, and that is to screen job candidates to find workers with a stronger work ethic who require less monitoring. This should be especially useful in work systems where monitoring by supervisors is more difficult, such as teamwork systems. We analyze the relationship between screening and monitoring in the context of a principal-agent model and test the theoretical results using a national sample of U.S. establishments, which includes information on employee selection. We find that employers screen applicants more intensively for work ethic where they make greater use of systems such as teamwork where monitoring is more difficult. This screening is also associated with higher wages, as predicted by the theory: The synergies between reduced monitoring costs and high performance work systems enable the firm to pay higher wages to attract and retain such workers. Screening for other attributes, such as work experiences and academic performance, does not produce these results.Employee Screening, Monitoring, Work Ethic, High Performance Work Practices, Principal-Agent Model.