Strategic Shirking in Promotion Tournaments

Jed DeVaro and Oliver Gürtler

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2016, vol. 32, issue 3, 620-651

Abstract: We provide a theoretical analysis of multitask promotion tournaments in which workers increase their promotion chances by under-performing (over-performing) on tasks that are de-emphasized (emphasized) in a promotion rule. In some settings the firm can mitigate such "strategic shirking" by committing to a promotion rule that requires more balance in the performances across job tasks than would be justified on productivity grounds. The model can explain "Putt’s Law", which states that competent workers are sometimes passed over for promotion in favor of incompetent ones. (JEL J24, M53).

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewv019 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:32:y:2016:i:3:p:620-651.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization is currently edited by Andrea Prat

More articles in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().