Compensation incentives and heat exposure affect farm worker effort

Farm workers are exposed to high risk of heat-related illness, especially when their jobs require working outside at a fast pace during hot days. Climate change has increased the number of days with high temperatures, and thereby the amount of time that farm workers are likely exposed to extreme heat. To better understand how high heat exposure affects farm workers, this study investigates how crop workers respond to heat exposure and estimates the effects of different pay and work arrangements on workers’ responses to heat exposure. We explore, specifically, whether piece-rate arrangements increase workers’ effort during periods with high heat exposure compared to workers paid by hourly wages. We use observational data from detailed measurements of localized heat exposure and individual workers’ effort in the field. First, these results show workers adjust their effort in response to heat exposure when the heat exposure level changes. Second, piece-rate arrangements increase workers’ effort during work shifts. Third, piece-rate arrangements allow workers to modify their effort more easily during different heat exposure levels. When facing low levels of heat exposure, workers who were paid by piece-rate arrangements exert a higher effort than workers paid by hourly wages, up until WBGT is 26.6˚C. When facing high levels of heat exposure (with WBGT exceeding 29.6˚C), workers paid by piece-rate arrangements lower their effort compared to workers paid by hourly wage arrangements.

ADVANTAGES, DISADVANTAGES AND PROSPECTS OF IMPLEMENTING A PIECE-RATE FORM OF PAY AT THE INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE ENVIRONMENT

The paper considers the conditions of expediency of using the piece-rate form of pay in the modern industrial environment. The necessity to ensure implementation of the motivational and stimulating role of the pay system is noted, as both business efficiency and employee motivation depend on this choice. The extensive use of piece-rate form of pay at industrial enterprises is related to its proven advantages, the main of which is the obvious relationship between production output and wages. This stimulates to increase individual employee productivity rate and efficiency the production system as a whole. The reason for the piece-rate form of pay to be promising to consist in its flexibility and ability to transform depending on the specifics of production environment and conditions of labour organization. Emphasized that despite mentioned advantages, implementation of piece-rate form of pay has its own certain limitations and risks. Specifically, it does not natively support accounting for a quality parameters of production, may lead to violation of production process synchronicity requirement and omit compliance to the norms of material consumption. Is determined that while choosing forms and systems of pay, it should be clearly understood that the development of an effective such system for successful monetary motivation of employees at the enterprise environment is an extremely complex task and depends on multiple factors, even if we take into consideration industrial enterprises only.

Pay incentives, human capital and firm innovation in smaller firms

This study advances the literature on human resource management in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) by analysing how individual and collective forms of performance-related pay (PRP) influence SMEs’ propensity for product and process innovation and how such influence varies depending on the firm’s level of human capital. We used the microdata of more than 12,000 European SMEs, controlled for endogeneity, and found that both individual (i.e. piece rate and commissions) and collective (i.e. group-bonus and profit-sharing) PRP are positively associated with higher levels of firm innovation. Interestingly, when both individual and collective PRP schemes are adopted, their association with firm innovation is significant but negative, indicating that the adoption of multiple pay incentives may be detrimental to SMEs’ innovation. Moreover, our results revealed that the effect of individual PRP on innovation is stronger in SMEs with high levels of human capital, whereas the effect of collective PRP is stronger in SMEs with low levels of human capital.

MANAGEMENT OF LABOR SYSTEM BASED ON STATISTICAL MODELS AND SIMULATION

The article considers the problem of the development of decision-making systems in relation to the system of remuneration of labor (LRS) at enterprises. For the introduction of new, more modern and effective types of LRS, decision-makers currently do not have adequate tools. Thus, there is a problem of developing decision support systems (DSS). The key element of the DSS is the LRS models, which provide predictive analytics. However, the compilation of a LRS model is a difficult task due to the factor of randomness and multivariance of LRS. To solve the problem, two approaches to the creation of LRS models are proposed: developing the statistical analytical models and creating the simulation models. In the study, the first approach is considered, namely, an analytical statistical model of one of the piece-rate system is proposed. Formulas are obtained for the probability densities of the resulting indicators of the piece-rate LRS, the statistical characteristics of the indicators and the assessment of the risk of ineffective LRS use are calculated. This will allow significant progress in the development of DSS in the field of labor economics and personnel management

Service Work, Sex Work, and the “Prostitute Imaginary”

This article considers the figure of the sex worker across Marxist political economy. Taking up what Melissa Gira Grant terms the “prostitute imaginary,” the authors suggest that from classical political economy to contemporary Marxist-feminist thought, the sex worker has been rhetorically deployed to trouble the boundaries between productive, unproductive, and reproductive work. More recently, the prostitute imaginary has shaped accounts of contemporary service work: in particular, the figure of the sex worker has been used to metaphorize the intimate affects demanded by service work. Rather than use service work to think about the exploitation and coercion that shapes all wage labor under capital, however, such accounts tend to treat service work and sex work as uniquely abject. As a result, they do not attend to the systemic and structural features common to both. The authors take up one of those features in particular: the use of tip-based or piece-rate methods of wage payment. They explore the history of this insecure and informalized wage form not only to track the systematization of hyperexploitation in the service sector, but also to unearth a history of resistance to that exploitation, arguing that service workers and sex workers offer a new and urgent model of revolutionary class consciousness.

COMPETITION AND RATCHET HYPOTHESIS: HOW SAFE ARE MANUFACTURING COMPANIES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA?

This study applied the conventional ratcheting notion that managers (agents) chose to restrict their performance because they anticipated that firms (principals) would respond to higher performance levels by raising targets or by cutting pay in a piece-rate labour environment. A cross-sectional panel model was developed to subject this baseline notion of ratcheting hypothesis to multi-period and ex-post competitive labour market environment, bearing in mind that there was information asymmetry to both parties. It was observed, as predicted by the theoretical model that there would be substantial ratchet effects in the absence of competition. However, when subjected to ex-post competition, the ratchet effects were reduced, regardless of whether market conditions favoured the firms or the managers and thereby making the manufacturing companies in Sub-Saharan Africa safer than when they were exposed to ratcheting in its conventional form.