Management of Knowledge Workers
Abstract
We study how complementarities and intellectual property rights affect the management of knowledge workers. The main results relay when a firm will wish to sue workers that leave with innovative ideas, and the effects of complementary assets on wages and on worker initiative. We argue that firms strongly protected by property rights may not sue leaving workers in order to motivate effort, while firms weakly protected by complementary assets must sue in order to obtain positive profits. Firms with more complementary assets pay higher wages (and have lower turnover), but such higher pay has a detrimental effect on worker initiative. Our analysis suggests that strengthened property rights protection reduces turnover costs but weakens worker initiative.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 6039.Length:
Date of creation: Jan 2007
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6039
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Related research
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation; IPR; Litigation; Personnel economics; R&D; Start-ups;Other versions of this item:
- Hvide, Hans K. & Kristiansen, Eirik Gaard, 2012. "Management of Knowledge Workers," IZA Discussion Papers 6609, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
- Hvide, Hans K. & Kristiansen, Eirik G., 2006. "Management of Knowledge Workers," Discussion Papers 2006/7, Department of Finance and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics.
- E00 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2007-01-28 (All new papers)
- NEP-BEC-2007-01-28 (Business Economics)
- NEP-CSE-2007-01-28 (Economics of Strategic Management)
- NEP-ENT-2007-01-28 (Entrepreneurship)
- NEP-HRM-2007-01-28 (Human Capital & Human Resource Management)
- NEP-INO-2007-01-28 (Innovation)
- NEP-IPR-2007-01-28 (Intellectual Property Rights)
- NEP-KNM-2007-01-28 (Knowledge Management & Knowledge Economy)
- NEP-LAB-2007-01-28 (Labour Economics)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Englmaier, Florian & Muehlheusser, Gerd & Roider, Andreas, 2010.
"Optimal Incentive Contracts under Moral Hazard When the Agent is Free to Leave,"
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