The Diversity of Personnel Practices and Firm Performance

Pedro Martins

No 10289, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Personnel economics tends be based on single-firm case studies. Here we examine the personnel practices of nearly 5,000 firms, over a period of 20 years, using detailed matched employer-employee panel data from Portugal. In the spirit of Baker et al. (1994a,b), we consider different dimensions of personnel management within each firm: worker turnover, the role of job levels and human capital as wage determinants, the dispersion of wages within job levels, the importance of tenure in terms of promotions and exits, and the scope for careers. We find a large degree of diversity in most of these practices across firms. Moreover, some personnel practices are shown to be robust predictors of higher levels of firm performance, even after controlling for time-invariant firm heterogeneity and other variables: low wage dispersion at low and intermediate job levels and a tight relationship between human capital variables and wages.

Keywords: job levels; personnel economics; wages; big data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 M51 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-hrm and nep-lma
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Published - published in: S. W. Polachek, K. Tatsiramos, G. Russo, G. van Houten (eds.), Workplace Productivity and Management Practices', (Research in Labour Economics 49), 2021

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Diversity of Personnel Practices and Firm Performance (2015)
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