Comportamenti individuali, organizzazione e salario. Individual Behaviours, Organization and Wage

Mincerian earnings equation, together with achievement tests, educational degrees and measures of cognitive skill are poor indicators of the competencies developed by individuals and, consequently, of the determinants of their wage differentials. The recent literature shows the increasing importance of the concept of ‘competence’ and of its explicative role as one of the wage determinants. Therefore, it is necessary to define the ‘competence’ concept, for which very much lexical confusion continues to exist in the economic and psychological literature too. The aim of this paper is to review three different literary approches to identify and define the components of the competencies, their characteristics and the role of families, firms and formal educational institutions in their training. In particular, it distinguishes a harder part of the hidden component of the competencies, important during the selection process – the traits – and a more flexible part, more easily influenced by the organizational practices adopted by the firm (e. g. HPWPs) – the characteristic adaptations. Furthermore, the empirical literature and the results relative to the effects of the competencies, the organizations and the behaviors originated by them on the wage differentials are analyzed. These results seem to confirm the expectations even if so far they are limited by econometrical problems like the omitted variables problems or the reverse causality problem, that leave room for further analysis. At last, two different incentive methods are distinguished - the input and the output oriented method – underlyining their limits and benefits.