Centralized Bargaining, Multi-Tasking, and Work Incentives

Assar Lindbeck and Dennis J. Snower
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Dennis J. Snower: Birkbeck College, University of London

No 473, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: The paper examines the implications of an important aspect of the ongoing reorganization of work - the move from occupational specialization toward multi-tasking - for centralized wage bargaining. The analysis shows how, on account of this reorganization, centralized bargaining becomes increasingly inefficient and detrimental to firms' profit opportunities, since it prevents firms from offering their employees adequate incentives to perform the appropriate mix of tasks. The paper also shows how centralized bargaining inhibits firms from using wages to induce workers to learn how to use their experience from one set of tasks to enhance their performance at other tasks. In this way, the paper helps explain the increasing resistance to centralized bargaining in various advanced market economies.

Keywords: Centralized wage bargaining; restructuring; organization of firms; technological change; information flows; employment; wage formation; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2012-12-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-lab
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Related works:
Working Paper: Centralized Bargaining, Multi-Tasking and Work Incentives (1999)
Working Paper: Centralized Bargaining, Multi-Tasking, and Work Incentives (1997)
Working Paper: Centralized Bargaining, Multi-Tasking and Work Incentives (1997)
Working Paper: Centralised Bargaining, Multitasking and Work Incentives (1996)
Working Paper: Centralized Bargaining, Multi-Tasking, and Work Incentives (1996)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0473

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