IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/mgtdec/v25y2004i6-7p329-345.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Compensating for innovation: Do small firms offer high-powered incentives that lure talent and motivate effort?

Author

Listed:
  • Todd R. Zenger

    (John M. Olin School of Business, Washington University, Campus Box 1133, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA)

  • Sergio G. Lazzarini

    (Ibmec São Paulo, R. Maestro Cardim 1170, São Paulo, SP 01323-001, Brazil)

Abstract

Empirical studies commonly confirm that small firms enjoy efficiency advantages in generating innovation. However, the origin of this advantage remains poorly understood. This study explores the hypothesis that small firms enjoy advantages over large firms in crafting effective, incentive-intensive employment contracts that lure top engineering talent and motivate high effort. These hypotheses are tested using data from a sample of R&D engineers in Silicon Valley and the Route 128 area. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Todd R. Zenger & Sergio G. Lazzarini, 2004. "Compensating for innovation: Do small firms offer high-powered incentives that lure talent and motivate effort?," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(6-7), pages 329-345.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:mgtdec:v:25:y:2004:i:6-7:p:329-345
    DOI: 10.1002/mde.1194
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/mde.1194
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/mde.1194?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Milgrom, Paul R, 1988. "Employment Contracts, Influence Activities, and Efficient Organization Design," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 42-60, February.
    2. George J. Stigler, 1962. "Information in the Labor Market," NBER Chapters, in: Investment in Human Beings, pages 94-105, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Welbourne, T.M. & Balkin, D.B. & Gomez-Mejia, L.R., 1993. "Gainsharing & Mutual Monitoring," Papers 93-12, Cornell - Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies.
    4. Bishop, John, 1987. "The Recognition and Reward of Employee Performance," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(4), pages 36-56, October.
    5. Rasmusen, Eric & Zenger, Todd, 1990. "Diseconomies of Scale in Employment Contracts," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 65-92, Spring.
    6. Garen, John E, 1985. "Worker Heterogeneity, Job Screening, and Firm Size," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(4), pages 715-739, August.
    7. Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, 1985. "Control: Organizational and Economic Approaches," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 134-149, February.
    8. John Hagedoorn, 1995. "A note on international market leaders and networks of strategic technology partnering," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 241-250.
    9. Coughlan, Anne T & Narasimhan, Chakravarthi, 1992. "An Empirical Analysis of Sales-Force Compensation Plans," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(1), pages 93-121, January.
    10. Todd R. Zenger & William S. Hesterly, 1997. "The Disaggregation of Corporations: Selective Intervention, High-Powered Incentives, and Molecular Units," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 8(3), pages 209-222, June.
    11. Kandel, Eugene & Lazear, Edward P, 1992. "Peer Pressure and Partnerships," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(4), pages 801-817, August.
    12. Levinthal, Daniel, 1988. "A survey of agency models of organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 153-185, March.
    13. Erik Brynjolfsson & Thomas W. Malone & Vijay Gurbaxani & Ajit Kambil, 1994. "Does Information Technology Lead to Smaller Firms?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(12), pages 1628-1644, December.
    14. Idson, Todd L & Feaster, Daniel J, 1990. "A Selectivity Model of Employer-Size Wage Differentials," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(1), pages 99-122, January.
    15. Mellow, Wesley, 1982. "Employer Size and Wages," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(3), pages 495-501, August.
    16. Main, Brian G M & Reilly, Barry, 1993. "The Employer Size-Wage Gap: Evidence for Britain," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 60(238), pages 125-142, May.
    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. Majumdar, Sumit K., 2010. "Institutional changes, firm size and wages in the telecommunications sector," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 201-217, July.
    2. Thierry Lallemand & Robert Plasman & François Rycx, 2007. "The establishment-size wage premium: evidence from European countries," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 34(5), pages 427-451, December.
    3. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2165-2214 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Albaek, Karsten & Arai, Mahmood & Asplund, Rita & Barth, Erling & Strojer Madsen, Erik, 1998. "Measuring wage effects of plant size," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 425-448, December.
    5. Brown, Charles & Medoff, James, 1989. "The Employer Size-Wage Effect," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1027-1059, October.
    6. Mark Wooden, 2001. "Union Wage Effects in the Presence of Enterprise Bargaining," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 77(236), pages 1-18, March.
    7. Thierry Lallemand & François Rycx, 2007. "Employer Size and the Structure of Wages: A Critical Survey," Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(2), pages 75-87.
    8. Colin Green & John S. Heywood & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2017. "Employer size and supervisor earnings: Evidence from Britain," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 04-2017, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    9. Feng, Shuaizhang & Zheng, Bingyong, 2010. "Imperfect Information, On-the-Job Training, and the Employer Size-Wage Puzzle: Theory and Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 4998, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Paul Hettler, 2007. "The Decomposition of Firm-size Wage Differentials," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 477-486, July.
    11. Michael T. Rauh, 2020. "The Neoclassical Firm Under Moral Hazard," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(2), pages 191-225, June.
    12. Kraybill, David S. & Yoder, Michael J. & McNamara, Kevin T., 1991. "Employer Size, Human Capital, And Rural Wages: Implications For Southern Rural Development," Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 23(2), pages 1-10, December.
    13. Lajili, Kaouthar & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2005. "Revisiting Agency and Transaction Costs Theory Predictions on Vertical Financial Ownership and Contracting: Electronic Integration as an Organizational Form Choice," Working Papers 05-0106, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    14. Hilal Atasoy & Rajiv D. Banker & Paul A. Pavlou, 2016. "On the Longitudinal Effects of IT Use on Firm-Level Employment," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 6-26, March.
    15. Zand, Fardad & Van Beers, Cees & Van Leeuwen, George, 2011. "Information technology, organizational change and firm productivity: A panel study of complementarity effects and clustering patterns in Manufacturing and Services," MPRA Paper 46469, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Feng, Shuaizhang, 2009. "Return to Training and Establishment Size: A Reexamination of the Size-Wage Puzzle," IZA Discussion Papers 4143, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Isabelle Vialle & Luis Santos-Pinto & Jean-Louis Rullière, 2011. "Self-Confidence and Teamwork : An Experimental Test," Working Papers 1126, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    18. Anja Tuschke, 2002. "Aktienbasierte Entlohnung zur Bewerberauswahl am Arbeitsmarkt für Führungskräfte," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 46-63, February.
    19. Alexander Muravyev, 2007. "Firm Size, Wages and Unobserved Skills: Evidence from Dual Job Holdings in the UK," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 681, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    20. Binnur Balkan & Semih Tumen, 2016. "Firm-Size Wage Gaps along the Formal-Informal Divide: Theory and Evidence," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 235-266, April.
    21. Jordi Brandts & Arthur Schram & Klarita Gërxhani, 2007. "Information Networks and Worker Recruitment," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 707.07, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).

    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:wly:mgtdec:v:25:y:2004:i:6-7:p:329-345. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/7976 .

    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.