IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlabec/doi10.1086-713759.html

Motivating Employees through Career Paths

Author

Listed:
  • Heski Bar-Isaac
  • Raphaël Lévy

Abstract

Firms have discretion over task allocations, which may dampen employees’ career prospects and, hence, their motivation. Task assignments and worker motivation interact through the extent of labor market competition—that is, the possibility of moving to another firm. More competition enhances motivation but decreases firms’ incentives to assign workers to informative tasks. One consequence is that competitive firms sometimes choose strategies that lead to intermediate competition. When the employee pool is heterogeneous, firms might choose different human resource practices that attract different kinds of workers and differentiate themselves through the career opportunities that they offer within and beyond the firm.

Suggested Citation

  • Heski Bar-Isaac & Raphaël Lévy, 2022. "Motivating Employees through Career Paths," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(1), pages 95-131.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/713759
    DOI: 10.1086/713759
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/713759
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/713759
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/713759?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Luca Picariello, 2019. "Promotions and Training: Do Competitive Firms Set the Bar too High?," CSEF Working Papers 552, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    2. de Bettignies, Jean-Etienne & Ries, John, 2023. "When less is more: Information and the financing of innovation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 346-369.
    3. Th'eo Durandard, 2023. "Dynamic delegation in promotion contests," Papers 2308.05668, arXiv.org.
    4. Adam Feher, 2024. "Guarding Expertise and Assets: Non-competition Agreements and Their Implications," IAAEU Discussion Papers 202404, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).
    5. Luca Picariello, 2026. "Organizational Design With Portable Skills," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 196-216, February.
    6. Marco Pagano & Luca Picariello, 2022. "Corporate Governance, Favoritism and Careers," CSEF Working Papers 643, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy, revised 06 Apr 2023.
    7. Simon Dato & Andreas Grunewald & Matthias Kräkel, 2021. "Worker visibility and firms' retention policies," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 168-202, February.
    8. Ferreira, Daniel & Nikolowa, Radoslawa, 2023. "Talent discovery and poaching under asymmetric information," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 116044, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Bastani, Spencer & Giebe, Thomas & Gürtler, Oliver, 2022. "Simple equilibria in general contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 264-280.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    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:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/713759. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JOLE .

    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.