Contributions published at Empirical Research in Business, Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management (Uschi Backes-Gellner)

Prior research has produced ambiguous support for theories on the nature and construction of Human Resource Management (HRM) systems. This ambiguity may be a function of the inherent limitations of the methodologies used in previous studies. We resume efforts by using a configurational methodology to analyze high performing HRM systems of 374 UK based firms. We reveal the multi-dimensional nature of successful and unsuccessful HRM systems. By providing a typology for comparing the interdependencies among vital and peripheral functions, we are able to describe and explain competitive advantages that rest in the orchestrating themes and integrative mechanisms of HRM systems.

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Although studies of student employment (‘earning while learning’) mostly find positive wage effects, they do not adequately consider the relation of the employment to the field of study. We investigate how different types of student employment during tertiary education affect short- and long-term labour market returns. Beyond examining differences between non-working and part-time working students, we distinguish between student employment related and unrelated to the field of study. Our results show significant positive labour market returns of ‘earning while learning’ only for student employment related to the field of study. These returns consist of a lower unemployment risk, shorter job-search duration, higher wage effects, and greater job responsibility.

In our paper, we explore the diversity-performance link in knowledge production and argue it to be the result of two countervailing effects (resource vs. process perspective). Theoretically, we show that the relative strength of the two effects crucially depends on moderating factors that relate to specificities of the knowledge production process, the type of diversity and group interaction. We empirically test our hypotheses based on an original data set of 45 university research groups from different disciplinary fields which are by nature expected to produce new knowledge and are faced with complex tasks. Employing traditional OLS regressions as well as non-parametric LOWESS analyses, our hypotheses are largely born out by the data. In particular, we find a U-shaped relation between cultural diversity and performance in research groups from the humanities & social sciences and a negative link between functional diversity and per-formance in research groups from the natural sciences. As the disciplinary fields proxy different underlying knowledge production processes, the implications of our study can be generalized to other settings and help derive general conclusions for the management of diversity and future competitiveness strategies in knowledge intensive economies.

This paper investigates the effect of financial incentives on student performance and analyzes for the first time how the incentive effect in education is moderated by students’ risk and time preferences. To examine this interaction we use a natural experiment that we combine with data from surveys and economic experiments on risk and time preferences. We not only find that students who are offered financial incentives for better grades have on average better first- and second-year grade point averages, but more importantly, we find that highly impatient students respond more strongly to financial incentives than less impatient students. This finding suggests that financial incentives are most effective if they solve educational problems of myopic students.

Although trainee pay is central to the economics of work-based training, institutionalists have paid it little attention, while economists typically assume that it is set by market clearing. We document large differences in the pay of metalworking apprentices in three countries: relative to the pay of skilled employees, it is high in Britain, middling in Germany, and low in Switzerland. Combining fieldwork evidence with national survey data, we associate apprentice pay with both institutional attributes and market forces: specifically, with trade union presence and goals, employer organisation, the contractual status of apprentices, the supply of eligible and interested young people, and public subsidies. Apprentice pay appears to have fallen in Britain and Germany as bargaining coverage has declined.

Economic crises in the last decades have swept elderly workers more than younger workers out of employment. But now the tide is turning. In affluent societies, elderly workers will have more opportunities of being employed in meaningful and well-paid jobs than ever before. On account of demographic changes, fewer (younger) workers will be around, and most of the reasons that in the past have induced employers to lay off older rather than younger workers will disappear. Future employment strategies will have to focus more on an optimal age mix and on benefitting from the full potential of the elderly.

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