Attracting responsible employees: Green production as labor market screening

Kjell Arne Brekke and Karine Nyborg

Resource and Energy Economics, 2008, vol. 30, issue 4, 509-526

Abstract: Corporate social responsibility can improve firms' ability to recruit highly motivated employees. This can secure socially responsible firms' survival even in a highly competitive environment. We show that if both socially responsible (green) and non-responsible (brown) firms exist in equilibrium, workers with high moral motivation, who shirk less than others, will self-select into the green firms. If unobservable effort is sufficiently important for firm productivity, this can drive every brown firm out of business--even in the case where many workers have no moral motivation whatsoever.

Keywords: Moral; hazard; Moral; motivation; Teamwork; Corporate; social; responsibility; Voluntary; abatement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (117)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:resene:v:30:y:2008:i:4:p:509-526

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