IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v21y2007i4p115-134.html

Human Resources from an Organizational Behavior Perspective: Some Paradoxes Explained

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey Pfeffer

Abstract

Workplaces in America and elsewhere show pervasive job dissatisfaction, distrust, and disengagement, with the evidence suggesting that these problems are getting worse and have a number of negative consequences for employers as well as employees. What follows is a necessarily selective exploration of human resource management in organizations, covering why it is often done so badly, what theory suggests about how to do it better, and why so little of what is known is actually implemented.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey Pfeffer, 2007. "Human Resources from an Organizational Behavior Perspective: Some Paradoxes Explained," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 115-134, Fall.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:21:y:2007:i:4:p:115-134
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.21.4.115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.21.4.115
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. Paul Osterman, 1994. "How Common is Workplace Transformation and Who Adopts it?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 47(2), pages 173-188, January.
    3. Edward P. Lazear, 2000. "Performance Pay and Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1346-1361, December.
    4. George A. Akerlof, 1982. "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(4), pages 543-569.
    5. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Phyllis A. Siegel & Donald C. Hambrick, 2005. "Pay Disparities Within Top Management Groups: Evidence of Harmful Effects on Performance of High-Technology Firms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(3), pages 259-274, June.
    7. William N. Cooke, 1992. "Product Quality Improvement through Employee Participation: The Effects of Unionization and Joint Union-Management Administration," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 46(1), pages 119-134, October.
    8. Paul Osterman (ed.), 1984. "Internal Labor Markets," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026265105x, December.
    9. John Paul Macduffie, 1995. "Human Resource Bundles and Manufacturing Performance: Organizational Logic and Flexible Production Systems in the World Auto Industry," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 48(2), pages 197-221, January.
    10. Jeffrey Pfeffer & Alison Davis-Blake, 1992. "Salary Dispersion, Location in the Salary Distribution, and Turnover among College Administrators," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 45(4), pages 753-763, July.
    11. Robert N. Horn, 1988. "Analysis," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(4), pages 56-58, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    2. Chiaki Moriguchi, 2005. "Did American Welfare Capitalists Breach Their Implicit Contracts during the Great Depression? Preliminary Findings from Company-Level Data," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 59(1), pages 51-81, October.
    3. Nobel Prize Committee, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    4. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    5. Derek C. Jones & Takao Kato, 2011. "The Impact of Teams on Output, Quality, and Downtime: An Empirical Analysis Using Individual Panel Data," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 64(2), pages 215-240, January.
    6. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 2008. "Contracts as Reference Points," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 1-48.
    7. Mari Kangasniemi, 2012. "Job satisfaction and wage dispersion," Working Papers 278, Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE.
    8. Bloom, Nicholas & Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Human Resource Management and Productivity," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 19, pages 1697-1767, Elsevier.
    9. Annemarie Nelen & Andries De Grip, 2009. "Why Do Part‐time Workers Invest Less in Human Capital than Full‐timers?," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 23(s1), pages 61-83, March.
    10. Brandes, Leif & Franck, Egon, 2012. "Social preferences or personal career concerns? Field evidence on positive and negative reciprocity in the workplace," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 925-939.
    11. 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.
    12. Kfir Eliaz & Ran Spiegler, 2014. "Reference Dependence and Labor Market Fluctuations," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 159-200.
    13. Altman, Morris, 2014. "Insights from behavioral economics on how labor markets work," Working Paper Series 3466, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    14. Jaap Paauwe, 2009. "HRM and Performance: Achievements, Methodological Issues and Prospects," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 129-142, January.
    15. Bradler, Christiane & Neckermann, Susanne & Warnke, Arne Jonas, 2016. "Incentivizing creativity: A large-scale experiment with tournaments and gifts," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-040, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    16. Daniel S. Nagin & James B. Rebitzer & Seth Sanders & Lowell J. Taylor, 2002. "Monitoring, Motivation, and Management: The Determinants of Opportunistic Behavior in a Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 850-873, September.
    17. Bogliacino, Francesco & Grimalda, Gianluca & Pipke, David, 2021. "Kind or contented? An investigation of the gift exchange hypothesis in a natural field experiment in Colombia," Kiel Working Papers 2199, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    18. Schneck, Stefan, 2014. "My Wage is Unfair! Just a Feeling or Comparison with Peers?," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 1(3), pages 245-273, May.
    19. Kochan, Thomas A., 1996. "What works at work : overview and assessment," Working papers 3886-96., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    20. Pierpaolo Battigalli & Martin Dufwenberg, 2022. "Belief-Dependent Motivations and Psychological Game Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 833-882, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:21:y:2007:i:4:p:115-134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.