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Employee types and endofenous organizational design: An experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Antoni Cunyat

    (Universitat de València)

  • Randolph Sloof

    (CERGE-EI)

Abstract

When managers are sufficiently guided by social preferences, incentive provision through an organizational mode based on informal implicit contracts may provide a cost-effective alternative to a more formal mode based on explicit contracts and monitoring. This paper reports the results from a laboratory experiment designed to test whether organizations make full effective use of the available preference types within their work force when drafting their organizational design. Our main finding is that they do not do so; although the importance of social preferences is recognized by those choosing the organizational mode, the significant impact managers' preferences have on the behavior of workers in the organization seems to be overlooked. Keywords:employee, organizational design, social preferences. Cuando los managers poseen unas preferencias sociales lo suficientemente importantes, los incentivos generados en organizaciones basadas en contratos informales implícitos pueden ser una alternativa menos costosa que la basada en contratos formales explícitos y supervisión. En este trabajo presentamos los resultados de un experimento en el laboratorio diseñado para examinar si las organizaciones hacen un uso completamente efectivo de los diferentes tipos de preferencias presentes en su fuerza de trabajo a la hora de diseñar una organización Nuestro principal resultado es que éste uso no es completo; aunque los responsables de diseñar los modos organizativos reconocen la importancia de las preferencias sociales, el impacto significativo que las preferencias de los managers tienen sobre el comportamiento de los trabajadores es aparentemente es ignorado

Suggested Citation

  • Antoni Cunyat & Randolph Sloof, 2009. "Employee types and endofenous organizational design: An experiment," Working Papers. Serie AD 2009-04, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    • Handle: RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2009-04
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    3. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    4. José J. Sempere Monerris & Rafael Moner Colonques & Amparo Urbano Salvador, 2010. "Trade liberalization in vertically related markets," Working Papers. Serie AD 2010-09, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    5. Empar Pons Blasco & Luisa Escriche Bertolín, 2009. "Who moves up the career ladder? A model of gender differences in job promotion," Working Papers. Serie AD 2009-23, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    6. Ben-Ner, Avner, 2013. "Preferences and organization structure: Toward behavioral economics micro-foundations of organizational analysis," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 87-96.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    empleado; diseño organizativo; preferencias sociales. employee; organizational design; social preferences.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • J40 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - General
    • M50 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - General

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