Kerstin Pull

HR outsourcing and service quality: theoretical framework and empirical evidence

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to analyse the relationship between HR outsourcing and service quality by focusing on motivational and incentive aspects.Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies a game‐theoretic model of procurement decisions allowing for variable degrees of vertical integration and confronts the implications of its analysis with HR outsourcing data on a large sample of German firms.Findings – The paper presents evidence for HR service quality being generally higher when procured from an external instead of an in‐house provider. Furthermore, the relationship between HR outsourcing and service quality is considerably stronger if the provided services are complex and if the potential for monitoring an internal provider is low.Practical implications – The findings have immediate practical implications concerning the make‐or‐buy decision of HR services: the more complex the HR service under consideration and the lower the potential to monitor its in‐house provision, the more at...

Flexibility in HRM and foreign direct investment: Do international investors self-select?

Only a few studies so far have tried to assess the role of HRM-flexibility in cross-national location decisions. None of these, however, investigates a potential heterogeneity across multinationals in terms of their specific needs concerning different types of flexibility in HRM. In this paper, I theoretically and empirically analyse the impact of HRM-flexibility on the type of investment being attracted. The theoretical implications are based on a real options framework and are derived in the context of a British–German comparison. They are confronted with data from an original survey on US-multinationals with manufacturing subsidiaries in Germany and the UK. The analysis reveals that in UK subsidiaries, investments in R&D are significantly lower, and technological uncertainty is significantly felt less strongly than in their German counterparts. Both results are compatible with the implications derived from the real options framework.

Equity versus Efficiency? Evidence from Three-Person Generosity Experiments

In two-person generosity games, the proposer’s agreement payoff is exogenously given, whereas that of the responder is endogenously determined by the proposer’s choice of the pie size. In three-person generosity games, equal agreement payoffs for two of the players are either exogenously excluded or imposed. We predict that the latter crowds out - or at least weakens - efficiency seeking. Our treatments rely on a 2x3 factorial design, differing in whether the responder or the third (dummy) player is the residual claimant and whether the proposer’s agreement payoff is larger, equal, or smaller than the other exogenously given agreement payoff.

Warum Väter ihre Erwerbstätigkeit (nicht) unterbrechen. Mikroökonomische versus in der Persönlichkeit des Vaters begründete Determinanten der Inanspruchnahme von Elternzeit durch Väter

In diesem Beitrag werden die Determinanten der Inanspruchnahme von Elternzeit durch Väter in Deutschland untersucht. Zwar stieg der Anteil der Väter in Elternzeit seit der Elterngeldreform im Jahr 2007 kontinuierlich an, doch stellen Väter immer noch die Minderheit der Elternzeit-Beansprucher. Im theoretischen Teil des Beitrags werden mikroökonomische und an der Persönlichkeit des Vaters anknüpfende Determinanten für und wider die Inanspruchnahme der Elternzeit durch Väter einander gegenübergestellt. Die empirische Überprüfung der Hypothesen erfolgt anhand eines originären Datensatzes, welcher im Rahmen einer Online-Befragung unter berufstätigen Vätern in Deutschland, deren Kind(er) nach dem 01.01.2001 geboren wurde(n), erhoben wurde. Die Stichprobe umfasst 1.290 Väter, von denen 484 Elternzeiterfahrung haben. Eine logistische Regressionsanalyse mit der abhängigen Variable „Inanspruchnahme von Elternzeit durch den Vater: ja – nein” zeigt, dass die Entscheidung des Vaters stärker von ökonomischen Determinanten bestimmt wird als von seiner Persönlichkeit. Ein weiterer bedeutsamer Faktor ist das Geschlechterrollenverständnis des Vaters.

Firm Size, Wages and Production Technology

Large firms pay higher wages than small ones. In this paper, the employer-size wage effect is derived with the help of a simple Nash-bargaining model where size is captured by the extent to which the production technology exhibits economies of scale. It can be shown that under reasonable assumptions an increasing returns to scale technology leads to higher wages than a constant or decreasing returns to scale technology.

The Incentive Effects of Appointment Tournaments in German Higher Education

In 2001, the German system of higher education underwent reforms that were, among others, intended to raise the incentives for university professors. However, even before the reform, publication records of university German professors showed high output levels over a long period of academic careers. We present one possibility of rationalizing the observed behavior by modeling the incentive effects of appointment tournaments in German higher education. We extend Lazear and Rosen (1981) by allowing for intrinsic motivation applying J-curved effort cost functions and accounting for contestant heterogeneity distinguishing junior academics and professors. We analyze the effects of selected reform elements on the incentives arising from the appointment system.

What Behavioural Economics Teaches Personnel Economics

In this survey article, we review results from behavioural and experimental economics that have a potential application in the field of personnel economics. While personnel economics started out with a “clean” economic perspective on human resource management (HRM), recently it has broadened its perspective by increasingly taking into account the results from laboratory experiments. Besides having inspired theory-building, the integration of behavioural economics into personnel economics has gone hand in hand with a strengthening of empirical analyses (field experiments and survey data) complementing the findings from the laboratory. Concentrating on employee compensation as one particular field of application, we show that for personnel economics there is indeed much to be learnt from the recent developments in behavioural economics. Moreover, integrating behavioural economics into personnel economics bears the chance of eventually reconciling personnel economics and “classic” HRM analysis that has a long tradition of relying on social psychology as a classical point of reference.

Mentoring in Higher Education: Does It Enhance Mentees' Research Productivity?.

Mentoring programs are increasingly widespread in academia. Still, comparatively little is known about their effects. With the help of a self-collected dataset of 368 researchers in two different fields and accounting for self-selection via matching techniques, we find mentees in formal mentoring programs to be more productive than comparable researchers who do not participate in a formal program – irrespective of whether these instead have an informal mentor or not. Informal mentoring relationships, to the contrary, do not positively affect mentees’ research productivity.

Ultimatum Games and Wages: Evidence of an 'Implicit Bargain'?

In this paper, I argue that both ultimatum game outcomes and wages may be influenced by what the result of a bargain would have been: The players in the ultimatum game, just as the parties to the labor contract, seem to engage in what may be called an “implicit” or, in Selten’s words, an “imaginary” bargain. In determining ultimatum game outcomes, assuming an implicit bargain can account for the experimental evidence on the role of responder bargaining power. Moreover, the implications of the implicit bargain for the wage setting process are compatible with the stylized facts of wage determination.

Composition of junior research groups and PhD completion rate: disciplinary differences and policy implications

This paper explores the link between the composition and the performance of junior research groups. The authors argue that the heterogeneity-performance link depends on the type of heterogeneity (cultural vs. study field) and on the disciplinary area. The authors test their hypotheses on a data set of 45 junior research groups and find a U-shaped relation between cultural heterogeneity and performance in the humanities and social sciences, but no link between the two in the natural sciences. The link between study field heterogeneity and performance in the natural sciences is negative, and in the humanities and social sciences study field heterogeneity and performance are not related. Interaction within the group helps reap the benefits of heterogeneity. The study results are derived in the context of junior research groups in Germany, but are generalizable to other countries and contexts where PhD education is taking part in groups.