Search

Using personnel records from a car sales company, this study shows that subjective performance evaluations of sales representatives are less sensitive to objectively measured sales in the presence of hard-to-measure, non-sales tasks. Findings confirm that supervisors use the evaluations to incentivize employees to pursue these tasks, such as mentoring junior representatives and building long-term customer relationships. The authors show that subjective evaluations predict future sales, suggesting that the evaluations have informative content related to actual worker performance. The authors find that the response of workers who receive lower-than-expected evaluations differs by supervisor experience: Those who are evaluated by inexperienced supervisors quit more often, whereas those who are evaluated by experienced supervisors respond with lower sales in the next period, even though distribution of evaluations does not vary by supervisor experience. Results are consistent with the interpretation that experienced supervisors are better able to communicate with workers to induce desired behavior.

Purpose – Under a discontinuous and nonlinear compensation scheme, which is prevalent among car dealerships, the amount of a salesperson’s expected daily commission depends primarily on his position in the pay schedule on the day he makes a sale. Salespeople thus vary their efforts and adopt a different pricing strategy week by week, or even day by day. The purpose of this paper is to examine the incentive effect of such a nonlinear scheme and provide the evidence that salespeople’s behavior is consistent with the theory. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct regression analyses using the transaction data provided by two North American auto dealerships. The authors construct a daily measure of varying incentive intensity and evaluate its impact on the distribution of individual daily sales and the dealership’s gross profit rate. Findings – The authors find that the daily measure of varying incentive intensity has a positive effect on the distribution of individual daily sales and a negative impact on the dealership’s gross profit rate. The results suggest that: salespeople adjust their effort levels in response to the intensity of incentives; and they game the system by lowering the prices when the marginal return to doing so is high. Research limitations/implications – The study shows that there is a high cost associated with the discontinuous nonlinear pay scheme, raising the question of why many auto dealerships use it. Originality/value – This paper sheds light on the undesirable aspects of discontinuous and nonlinear incentive schemes, varied performance and gaming, by quantifying the effects of the worker’s behavior.

This article investigates the current trend toward cell production and other workplace innovations in Japan using a large–scale sampling survey of manufacturing firms and in–depth interviews with four leading electrical and electronic establishments. The quantitative analysis reveals the correlation between the use of cell production and the ratio of female to male workers and production strategy variables, as well as the positive effect of cell production on operating profit rates and ordinary profit rates. The case studies reveal the following points: First, processes and organizations have been decentralized to the degree that individual workshops move toward taking primary responsibility for customer relations, production decisions, and delivery. Corporate headquarters increasingly play a coordinating rather than decision–making role. Second, firms have steadily implemented make–to–order systems by tightening links to suppliers and customers and developing new inventory and cost–control systems. Third, firms have started to implement more performance–based personnel practices. However, considerable variance among firms is observed in complementary changes, particularly personnel innovations.

Les AA. s'interrogent sur les raisons du declin des syndicats au Japon. Ils examinent l'evolution de la syndicalisation entre 1950 et 1993. Ils presentent, de meme, un certain nombre de donnees collectees dans ce pays en 1992 aupres d'ouvriers syndiques et non-syndiques. Ils etudient l'influence d'un certain nombre de facteurs comme : le salaire, l'attitude vis-a-vis des syndicats. Ils soulignent le role des syndicats d'entreprise japonais constituant un facteur important sur le plan de la participation sociale des salaries et cela malgre un taux de syndicalisation tres faible

In their now classic book What Do Unions Do? Freeman and Medoff (1984) open their discussion as follows (p. 3): “Trade unions are the principal institution of workers in modern capitalistic societies. For over 200 years, since the days of Adam Smith, economists and other social scientists, labor unionists, and businessmen and women have debated the social effects of unionism. Despite the long debate, however, no agreed-upon answer has emerged to the question: What do unions do?” In the remainder of the book, the authors provide a coherent answer to this question and, as a result, What Do Unions Do? has become firmly established as a cornerstone for the economic analysis of labor unions. However, since the first publication of the book, developments have emerged that are inconsistent with Freeman and Medoff's predictions regarding the effectiveness of unions. One such development, for example, is the precipitous decline in union density in many countries around the world; another is the growing importance of, and interest in, alternative forms of employee representation.

This paper analyzes the reserve army effect from a perspective which integrates propositions from the social structures of accumulation and regulation approaches. The magnitude of the reserve army effect on nominal wage growth ought to vary according to the subperiods 1958–1970, 1970–1980, and 1980–1987, and also according to subsectors with different unionization rates. This hypothesis is tested empirically by estimating the effect of demand pressure variables on nominal wage growth for heavily, moderately, and lightly unionized sectors. The results generally confirm the hypothesis, while at the same time showing clear differences in the impact of collective bargaining on the reserve army effect between 1958–1970 and 1980–1987.

Six new bisabolane-type sesquiterpenes, peroxylippidulcines A-C (3-5), peroxyepilippidulcine B (6), and epilippidulcines B (7) and C (8), have been isolated from the aerial parts of Lippia dulcis, along with two known bisabolane-type sesquiterpenes, seven known flavonoids, and a known triterpenoid. The structures of 3-8 were characterized on the basis of NMR, MS, specific rotation, and X-ray crystallographic analysis data and chemical evidence.