Specific Human Resource Practices Towards Middle Managers and Their Effects on Their Strategic Roles

This research focuses on the contribution of human resource managers to activate and develop the potential of middle managers in a strategy development process. Precisely, the attention is directed on specific practices used by human resource managers and their effects on strategic roles of middle managers in emerging market companies. A survey questionnaire was distributed to 350 CEOs of large Tunisian companies participating in the Industrial Upgrading Program. The results of the application of structural equation methods show the existence and significant and positive effects of specific human resource practices on strategic roles of middle managers. Participation in the decisions and team/group incentives are used by middle managers and influence all strategic roles of middle managers. However, pre-employment training is used towards middle managers, but it has no effect on all strategic roles of middle managers.

Wage Transparency and Social Comparison in Sales Force Compensation

When wages are transparent, sales agents may compare their pay with that of their peers and experience positive or negative feelings if those peers are paid (respectively) less or more. We investigate the implications of such social comparisons on sales agents’ effort decisions and their incentives to help or collaborate with each other. We then characterize the firm’s optimal sales force compensation scheme and the conditions under which wage transparency benefits the firm. Our results show that the work environment—which includes such aspects as demand uncertainty, correlation across sales territories, and the possibility of help/collaboration—plays a significant role in the firm’s compensation and wage transparency decisions. In particular, wage transparency is more likely to benefit the firm when demand uncertainty is low, sales outcomes are positively correlated across different sales territories, and sales agents can collaborate at low cost. We find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, social comparisons need not reduce collaboration among agents. Our study also highlights the importance of providing the right mix of individual and group incentives to elicit the benefits of wage transparency. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

Specific Human Resource Practices Towards Middle Managers and Their Effects on Their Strategic Roles

This research focuses on the contribution of human resource managers to activate and develop the potential of middle managers in a strategy development process. Precisely, the attention is directed on specific practices used by human resource managers and their effects on strategic roles of middle managers in emerging market companies. A survey questionnaire was distributed to 350 CEOs of large Tunisian companies participating in the Industrial Upgrading Program. The results of the application of structural equation methods show the existence and significant and positive effects of specific human resource practices on strategic roles of middle managers. Participation in the decisions and team/group incentives are used by middle managers and influence all strategic roles of middle managers. However, pre-employment training is used towards middle managers, but it has no effect on all strategic roles of middle managers.

The Formation of Group Ties in Open Interaction Groups

We examine how task jointness and group incentive structures bear on the nature and strength of the affective and cognitive ties that people forge to a group. The argument is that affective group ties have stronger effects on social order than cognitive group ties. There are two general hypotheses. First, joint tasks generate stronger cognitive and affective ties to groups, whereas group incentives generate cognitive but not necessarily affective ties to the group. Second, affective ties more effectively solve two fundamental problems of social order in groups: (1) sustaining membership (also known as stay behavior) and (2) generating the joint gains of further collaboration (cooperation). The theoretical logic is that joint tasks promote a sense of shared responsibility, and this leads members to attribute their individual emotions to the group as an object, whereas alignment of individual and group incentives does not produce such effects. The theory and hypotheses are tested experimentally in four-person open interaction groups, manipulating task jointness (high, low, none) and incentives (individual based vs. group based). The results generally support the hypotheses underlying the theoretical logic. Affective ties to groups are based primarily on levels of task jointness, and such tasks have stronger effects than incentives on the capacity of groups to retain membership and induce cooperation in social dilemmas.

On the use of group performance and rights for environmental protection and resource management

Environmental and natural resource (ENR) policies that focus on group outcomes are common but have received relatively less attention from economists than policies based on individual behavior. Existing research tends to focus on particular contexts, such as water or air quality, fisheries, or land use. This paper discusses unifying themes of group performance policies, along with their advantages and disadvantages. We discuss a range of specific policy instruments, including group-based taxes, subsidies, and fixed penalties. We show how, in principle, group-based policies can be designed to achieve efficient provision of group-level environmental performance; however, in some cases, group policies can lead to suboptimal outcomes. We discuss the incentives for collaboration that can arise when regulators impose group performance policies, and the role that it can play in promoting efficient outcomes. We argue that the success of group-based policies will depend both on how the policy is designed (i.e., the external rewards and penalties) and on how the group operates. This implies potential complementarities between “top-down” regulatory interventions based on group performance and “bottom-up” within-group incentives for self-governance. Our discussion suggests that group performance policies should play a more prominent role in the suite of policy instruments considered by scholars and policymakers concerned with ENR management.