Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 36

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Paying Our Presidents: What Do Trustees Value?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, John J. Cheslock, Julia Epifantseva Nov 2012

Paying Our Presidents: What Do Trustees Value?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, John J. Cheslock, Julia Epifantseva

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our study makes use of data from a panel of over 400 private colleges and universities on their presidents’ salaries and benefits. These data, reported annually to the Internal Revenue Service on Form 990, have been collected by and reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education for academic years 1992–1993 through 1997–1998. We merge these data with those from other sources including the American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education, Who’s Who in America, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the Council on Aid to Education, and the National Science Foundation’s CASPAR system. This …


Faculty Retirement Policies After The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael J. Rizzo Oct 2012

Faculty Retirement Policies After The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael J. Rizzo

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The findings we report above have implications for both institutions and their faculty members. In some states, rapidly growing college age cohorts will require academic institutions to hire large numbers of new faculty in the years ahead to fill positions created to meet the expanding demand for enrollments. Nationally, institutions will have to replace a large number of retiring faculty members in the years ahead. This suggests that most institutions’ concern in upcoming years will not be how to encourage their faculty members to retire. Rather, their concern will be how to continue to draw on the skills of …


Cornell Confronts The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael W. Matier, David Fontanella Sep 2012

Cornell Confronts The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael W. Matier, David Fontanella

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In July 1995, the first author of this paper was appointed vice president of academic programs, planning and budgeting at Cornell and, at his initiative, a joint faculty-administrative committee was subsequently established, with him as chair, to look into how the university should respond to the elimination of mandatory retirement. In this chapter, we discuss the environment in which the university found itself when the committee was established, the recommendations of the committee, faculty reactions to the recommendations, and the actions that the university ultimately decided to pursue.


No Longer Forced Out: How One Institution Is Dealing With The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Sep 2012

No Longer Forced Out: How One Institution Is Dealing With The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

: [Excerpt] Why should academic institutions or their faculty care about the end of mandatory retirement for tenured faculty, which became effective in January 1994? From the perspective of an individual tenured faculty member who wants to continue her career beyond age seventy, the elimination is a welcome event. In the past, faculty members who wanted to remain active after reaching seventy had to negotiate their status with institutions that were under no legal obligation to allow them to continue. Now, however, tenured faculty members have the legal right to continue indefinitely in their tenured appointments. From the point of …


Estimating Wage-Fringe Trade-Offs: Some Data Problems, Robert Smith, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Aug 2012

Estimating Wage-Fringe Trade-Offs: Some Data Problems, Robert Smith, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This paper represents an inquiry into some of the data related difficulties inherent in estimating wage-fringe trade-offs, and it explores the usefulness of a particular source of data in meeting these difficulties.


Compensating Wage Differentials For Mandatory Overtime, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Paul L. Schumann Aug 2012

Compensating Wage Differentials For Mandatory Overtime, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Paul L. Schumann

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper estimates the extent to which employees are compensated for an unfavorable job characteristic, being required to accept mandatory assignment of overtime, by receiving higher straight—time wages. Our estimating equations are derived from a model in which wage rates and the existence of mandatory assignment of overtime are jointly determined in the market by the interaction of employee and employer preferences. While on average, we do not observe the existence of a compensating wage differential for mandatory overtime, we do observe the existence of such differentials for unionized workers and workers with only a few years experience at a …


Why Warn? The Impact Of Recent Plant-Closing And Layoff Prenotification Legislation In The United States, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, George H. Jakubson Aug 2012

Why Warn? The Impact Of Recent Plant-Closing And Layoff Prenotification Legislation In The United States, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, George H. Jakubson

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] WARN was passed only after a decade of strenuous debate. We can now look back and address a number of issues it raised. What benefits did its proponents think would arise from the notice legislation, and what costs did its opponents think there would be? What public policies toward advance notice do other nations have? Did displaced workers in the United States receive advance notice before the passage of WARN? What do we know empirically about the effects on workers and firms of the provision of advance notice? What has experience under WARN taught us? Finally, what research issues …


The Costs Of Defined Benefit Pension Plans And Firm Adjustments, Burt S. Barnow, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Aug 2012

The Costs Of Defined Benefit Pension Plans And Firm Adjustments, Burt S. Barnow, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] While it is obvious that the costs of term life insurance vary directly with age, it is less obvious how employers' contributions to pension funds, which comprise a major share of nonwage compensation, vary. As such, we focus in this paper on the most common variant of pension plans and demonstrate how an employer's cost of fully funding a plan varies with the age and service characteristics of his work force. This cost, as a percent of annual salary, is seen to increase with employees' ages and, in some cases, years of service. This variation has important implications for …


Retirement Policies, Employment, And Unemployment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Aug 2012

Retirement Policies, Employment, And Unemployment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] There is a growing consensus among economists that reliance on aggregate demand policies alone will not be sufficient to move the economy to full employment with a nonaccelerating inflation rate, and that policies which alter the structure of labor markets will be required. While obvious structural policies such as public sector employment programs and training programs are the focus of current debate, many other public policies affect labor markets in subtle ways which may well adversely affect the level and distribution of employment and unemployment. To help improve the inflation-unemployment tradeoff, policymakers should seek to marginally modify these policies, …


Do Economics Departments With Lower Tenure Probabilities Pay Higher Faculty Salaries?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Paul Pieper, Rachel Willis Aug 2012

Do Economics Departments With Lower Tenure Probabilities Pay Higher Faculty Salaries?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Paul Pieper, Rachel Willis

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

The simplest competitive labor market model asserts that if tenure is a desirable job characteristic for professors, they should be willing to pay for it by accepting lower salaries. Conversely, if an institution unilaterally reduces the probability that its assistant professors receive tenure, it will have to pay higher salaries to attract new faculty. Our paper tests this theory using data on salary offers accepted by new assistant professors at economics departments in the United States during the 1974-75 to 1980-81 period, along with data on the proportion of new Ph.D.s hired by each department between 1970 and 1980 that …


The Impact Of Retirement Policies On Employment And Unemployment, Ronald Ehrenberg Aug 2012

The Impact Of Retirement Policies On Employment And Unemployment, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This paper has focused on the impact of retirement policies on the level and distribution of employment and unemployment. All of the policies discussed, except for early retirement provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining contracts were seen to have adverse effects on the level and distribution of employment. Hence, the paper illustrates the more general point that policies designed to promote one social goal may well detract from achieving other goals and suggests that more explicit attention should be given to the employment effects of social programs and legislation prior to their adoption.


Executive Compensation In Municipalities, Gerald S. Goldstein, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Aug 2012

Executive Compensation In Municipalities, Gerald S. Goldstein, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In this paper we are concerned with the salaries of three important municipal officials; city-managers, police chiefs, and fire chiefs. We present a model that relates the salaries of these officials to a set of explanatory variables, the most important being measures associated with job performance. Two of these measures of performance are developed in the study. Further, the influence of the city-manager form of government on the incentive structure facing police chiefs and fire chiefs, and the interdependence betwen the salaries of police chiefs and fire chiefs is investigated. The model is tested using cross-section data for 1967.


Cost-Of-Living Adjustment Clauses In Union Contracts: A Summary Of Results, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Leif Danziger, Gee San Aug 2012

Cost-Of-Living Adjustment Clauses In Union Contracts: A Summary Of Results, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Leif Danziger, Gee San

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper provides an explanation why cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) provisions and their characteristics vary widely across U.S. industries. We develop models of optimal risk sharing between a firm and union to investigate the determinants of a number of contract characteristics. These include the presence and degree of wage indexing, the magnitude of deferred noncontingent wage increases, contract duration, and the trade-off between temporary layoffs and wage indexing. Preliminary empirical tests of some of the implications of the model are described. One key finding is that the level of unemployment insurance benefits appears to influence the level of layoffs and the …


Comparable Worth In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith Aug 2012

Comparable Worth In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] At the theoretical level, we conclude that the case for comparable worth rests on the argument that the current distribution of female employees is based on discriminatory barriers which existing legislation have not broken down. If this argument is valid, the desirability of comparable worth depends upon one's perceptions of how the benefits it provides contrasts with the efficiency losses it induces. Given the trade-offs involved, ultimately one's position on comparable worth must depend on value judgments.


Comparable-Worth Wage Adjustments And Female Employment In The State And Local Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith Aug 2012

Comparable-Worth Wage Adjustments And Female Employment In The State And Local Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper simulates the likely effects of a comparable-worth wage-adjustment policy in the state and local sector on female employment in the sector. The simulation is based on estimates of within-occupation male/female substitution and across-occupation occupational employment substitution that we obtain using data from the 1980 Census of Population.


The Cultural Dimensions Of Italian Leadership: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance And Masculinity From An American Perspective, Marco Tavanti Jul 2012

The Cultural Dimensions Of Italian Leadership: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance And Masculinity From An American Perspective, Marco Tavanti

Marco Tavanti

This article provides a cultural analysis of Italian leadership from a cross-cultural perspective. Americans view Italian leaders with cultural lenses and stereotypes often exaggerated by the media. Effective cross-cultural, business and international relations with Italians and Italian descendants require awareness of the true cultural dimensions beyond stereotypes and media portraits. Through the examination of Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE studies), this study reviews the cultural dimensions called power distance, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity in relation to Italian leadership. From a cross-cultural and American standpoint, the author provides a cultural analysis of globally …


Officer Performance And Compensation In Local Building Trades Unions, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2012

Officer Performance And Compensation In Local Building Trades Unions, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This paper presents estimates of the relationship between the performance and compensation of local building trades union leaders. A growing literature has revived the common-sense notion that organizations should structure the compensation of both their employees and their executives so as to encourage them to take actions consistent with the goals of the organizations. One way to minimize the probability that executives will take actions contrary to the organization's goals is to tie their compensation to measures of their organization's performance.


Absenteeism And The Overtime Decision, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2012

Absenteeism And The Overtime Decision, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Upon reading the congressional hearing on the Overtime Pay Penalty Act of 1964, one cannot fail to be impressed by the emphasis that management places on absenteeism as a primary cause of overtime. The argument given is basically quite simple: Large firms, it is claimed, attempt to account for absenteeism by hiring standby workers; however because of the stochastic nature of the absentee rate, it is impossible for them to have replacements always available. Hence overtime must be worked by existing employees in order to meet production schedules. One concludes from this argument that the randomness of absenteeism is …


Retirement System Characteristics And Compensating Wage Differentials In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2012

Retirement System Characteristics And Compensating Wage Differentials In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper presents evidence that a trade-off exists between wages and certain characteristics of retirement systems in the public sector. Cross-section econometric estimates for uniformed municipal employees, based upon data from two national surveys of municipalities, suggest that, other things equal, an increase in the contribution made by uniformed employees to their retirement system leads to a compensating increase in their salaries, while retirement systems with more "generous" characteristics are associated to some extent with lower salaries. The estimates also indicate that the extent of retirement system underfunding is related to employers' and employees' perceptions of the probability that promised …


Introduction: Do Compensation Policies Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg Jul 2012

Introduction: Do Compensation Policies Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The papers in this volume should give the reader a sense of the exciting empirical research that has recently taken place on compensation-related issues. As a set, these papers considerably expand our empirical evidence on the effects of compensation policies. Several papers show that executive compensation is structured in a way that at least implicitly ties executive compensation changes to measures of corporate performance, and —crucially—that doing so leads to improved corporate performance (Leonard, Murphy/Gibbons, Abowd). Others show that compensation systems that pay workers for performance, in the sense of providing explicit or implicit incentives for high levels of …


Determinants Of The Compensation And Mobility Of School Superintendents, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy Ehrenberg Jul 2012

Determinants Of The Compensation And Mobility Of School Superintendents, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Analyzing 197-83 panel data from more than 700 New York State school districts, the authors find evidence that school superintendents were rewarded, both by higher salary increases and by enhanced opportunities to move to belter-paying jobs, for having low school tax rates and high educational achievement within their districts, relative to the values of those variables in comparable school districts in the state. The rewards were, however, quite small. The analysis also suggests that the superintendents themselves did not significantly influence either school tax rates or educational test scores in their districts.


Flexibility And Fairness In Liberal Market Economies: The Comparative Impact Of The Legal Environment And High Performance Work Systems, Alexander Colvin Jun 2012

Flexibility And Fairness In Liberal Market Economies: The Comparative Impact Of The Legal Environment And High Performance Work Systems, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

This paper compares management flexibility in employment decision-making in the United States and Canada through a cross-national survey of organizations in representative jurisdictions in each country, Pennsylvania and Ontario respectively, that investigates the impact of differences in their legal environments. The results indicate that, compared to their Ontario counterparts, organizations in Pennsylvania have a higher degree of flexibility in employment outcomes, such as higher dismissal and discipline rates, yet do not experience any greater flexibility or simplicity in management hiring and firing decisions. One explanation for this result may lie in the finding that organizations in Pennsylvania experience greater legal …


The Effects Of Recruitment Message Specificity On Applicant Attraction To Organizations, Quinetta M. Roberson, Christopher J. Collins, Shaul Oreg May 2012

The Effects Of Recruitment Message Specificity On Applicant Attraction To Organizations, Quinetta M. Roberson, Christopher J. Collins, Shaul Oreg

Christopher J Collins

We used the elaboration likelihood model from marketing research to explain and examine how recruitment message specificity influences job seeker attraction to organizations. Using an experimental design and data from 171 college-level job seekers, the results showed that detailed recruitment messages led to enhanced perceptions of organization attributes and person-organization fit. Perceptions of fit were found to mediate the relationship between message specificity and intention to apply to the organization. In addition, perceptions of organization attributes and person-organization fit were found to influence intentions to apply under circumstances of explicit recruitment information while attractiveness and fit perceptions were shown to …


The Interactive Effects Of Recruitment Practices And Product Awareness On Job Seekers’ Employer Knowledge And Application Behaviors, Christopher J. Collins May 2012

The Interactive Effects Of Recruitment Practices And Product Awareness On Job Seekers’ Employer Knowledge And Application Behaviors, Christopher J. Collins

Christopher J Collins

In this paper, I draw on research from the literatures on marketing and recruitment to identify how recruitment practices and company product awareness are related to job seekers’ application behaviors through three aspects of job seekers’ employer knowledge. Based on results from a within-subjects design with data from 123 recruiting companies and 456 student job seekers, my findings suggested the relationships between recruitment strategies and application intentions and decisions are moderated by product awareness. Specifically, low-information recruitment practices are significantly and positively related to application behaviors through employer familiarity and employer reputation when product awareness is low rather than high. …


Exploring Applicant Pool Quantity And Quality: The Effects Of Early Recruitment Practice Strategies, Corporate Advertising, And Firm Reputation, Christopher J. Collins, Jian Han May 2012

Exploring Applicant Pool Quantity And Quality: The Effects Of Early Recruitment Practice Strategies, Corporate Advertising, And Firm Reputation, Christopher J. Collins, Jian Han

Christopher J Collins

Drawing on marketing and recruitment theory, we examined relationships between early recruitment practices, organizational factors, and organization-level recruitment outcomes, predicting that low-involvement recruitment practices, high-involvement recruitment practices, corporate advertising, and firm reputation would positively affect the quantity and quality of organizations’ applicant pools. We also predicted that corporate advertising and firm reputation would moderate the effects of the two recruitment strategies. Data for 99 organizations collected from multiple sources provided some evidence that early recruitment practices, corporate advertising, and firm reputation each had direct effects on applicant pool quantity and quality. More importantly, we found that low-involvement recruitment practices were …


The Utility Of The Assessment Of Spirituality And Religious Sentiments (Aspires) Scale With Christians And Buddhists In Sri Lanka, R. Piedmont, M. B. Werdel, Mario Fernando Apr 2012

The Utility Of The Assessment Of Spirituality And Religious Sentiments (Aspires) Scale With Christians And Buddhists In Sri Lanka, R. Piedmont, M. B. Werdel, Mario Fernando

Mario Fernando

The Assessment of Spirituality and Religious Sentiments (ASPIRES) Scale represents spirituality as a universal source of motivation. Psychometric evidence for this argument is demonstrated when scores on the scale remain reliable and structurally valid across cultures and religious contexts. The psychometric qualities of the ASPIRES was examined with in a diverse religious sample from Sri Lanka. The results demonstrated the structural validity and applicability of the measure within this ethnic group. The data provided further support for cross-cultural applicability of the instrument and for the assumption of spirituality as a universal aspect of the human experience.


Little Understood Knowledge Trap, Hans-Dieter Evers, Solvay Gerke, Thomas Menkhoff Apr 2012

Little Understood Knowledge Trap, Hans-Dieter Evers, Solvay Gerke, Thomas Menkhoff

Solvay Gerke

As knowledge increases, we realise how much else we do not know. Successful research always results in new questions. Any knowledge economy must be aware of such unknowns if it is to expand further through research and development. Debate on bridging the digital divide does not take this factor into account. Many of the strategies currently preached are misplaced.


Unions And The Contingent Work Force, Kate Bronfenbrenner Mar 2012

Unions And The Contingent Work Force, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] Unions seeking to organize the unorganized face increasing numbers of part-time, temporary and leased employees. These contingent workers now make up more than a quarter of the American work force. Of the new work force they are the least organized and perhaps the most difficult to organize. But they are also the group most in need of the protections, benefits and representation that a union can provide. There have always been some service industries such as hotel, health care and retail, that have maintained a large contingent work force because of long hours and fluctuating demand. Also there have …


Editor's Introduction (Review Symposium On Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes In Employment Systems), George R. Boyer Jan 2012

Editor's Introduction (Review Symposium On Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes In Employment Systems), George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] During the past two decades there have been significant changes in employment systems across industrialized countries. Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes in Employment Systems, by Harry C. Katz and Owen Darbishire, examines changes since 1980 in employment practices in seven industrialized countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and Italy—with a focus on the automotive and telecommunications industries. Katz and Darbishire find that variations in employment patterns within these countries have been increasing over the past two decades. The increase in variation is not simply a result of a decline in union strength in some sectors of …


Members Matter In Team Training: Multilevel And Longitudinal Relationships Between Goal Orientation, Self-Regulation, And Team Outcomes, Erich Dierdorff, Kemp Ellington Dec 2011

Members Matter In Team Training: Multilevel And Longitudinal Relationships Between Goal Orientation, Self-Regulation, And Team Outcomes, Erich Dierdorff, Kemp Ellington

Erich C. Dierdorff

Longitudinal data from 338 individuals across 64 teams in a simulation-based team-training context were used to examine the effects of dispositional goal orientation on self-regulated learning (self-efficacy and metacognition). Team goal orientation compositions, as reflected by average goal orientations of team members, were examined for moderating effects on these individual-level relationships. Finally, individual-level self-regulation was investigated for its influence on multiple team-level outcomes across time. Results showed generally positive effects of learning goal orientation and negative effects of avoid performance and prove performance goal orientations on rates of self-regulation during team training. However, several of these individual-level relationships were moderated …