We describe why human resource management (HRM) decisions are likely to have an important and unique influence on organizational performance. Our hope is that this research forum will help advance ...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/256712.pdf

The Impact of Human Resource Management on Organizational Performance: Progress and Prospects

Firms are organizations that represent social knowledge of coordination and learning. But why should their boundaries demarcate quantitative shifts in the knowledge and capability of their members? Should not knowledge reside also in a network of interacting firms? This line of questioning presents the challenge to state an alternative view to the “theory of the firm,” a theory that has moved from Coase's early treatment of what firms do to a concern with ownership, incentives, and self-interest. We return to Coase's original insight in understanding the cost and benefits of a firm but based on a view that individuals are characterized by an “unsocial sociality.” Does the perception of opportunism generate the need to integrate market transactions into the firm, or do boundaries of the firm lead to the attribution of opportunism? This basic dichotomy between self-interest and the longing to belong is the behavioral underpinning to the superiority of firms over markets in resolving a fundamental dilemma: p...

What Firms Do? Coordination, Identity, and Learning

In 590 for-profit and nonprofit firms from the National Organizations Survey, we found positive associations between human resource management (HRM) practices, such as training and staffing selectivity, and perceptual firm performance measures. Results also suggest methodological issues for consideration in examinations of the relationship between HRM systems and firm performance.

/pdf/the-impact-of-human-resource-management-practices-on-2c2vl7nm6j.pdf

The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices on Perceptions of Organizational Performance

This essay discusses the effect of technical change on wage inequality. I argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years. Furthermore, the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an acceleration in skill bias. In contrast to twentieth century developments, most technical change during the nineteenth century appears to be skill-replacing. I suggest that this is because the increased supply of unskilled workers in the English cities made the introduction of these technologies profitable. On the other hand, the twentieth-century has been characterized by skill-biased technical change because the rapid increase in the supply of skilled workers has induced the development of skill-complementary technologies. The recent acceleration in skill bias is in turn likely to have been a response to the acceleration in the supply of skills during the past several decades.

Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market

This essay discusses the effect of technical change on wage inequality. I argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years. Furthermore, the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an acceleration in skill bias. In contrast to twentieth-century developments, much of the technical change during the early nineteenth century appears to be skill-replacing. I suggest that this is because the increased supply of unskilled workers in the English cities made the introduction of these technologies profitable. On the other hand, the twentieth century has been characterized by skill-biased technical change because the rapid increase in the supply of skilled workers has induced the development of skillcomplementary technologies. The recent acceleration in skill bias is in turn likely to have been a response to the acceleration in the supply of skills during the past several decades.

/pdf/technical-change-inequality-and-the-labor-market-5dt0t9hxk6.pdf

U.S. private equity fundraising had its best year ever in 2015 — raising $185 billion. But is the enthusiasm of investors warranted? Do PE buyout funds deliver outsized returns to investors and will they do so in the future? This report answers this question by reviewing the most recent empirical evidence on buyout fund performance; the answer is no. While median private equity buyout funds once beat the S&P 500, they have not done so since 2006 -- despite industry claims to the contrary.

Are Lower Private Equity Returns the New Normal

Private Equity at Work

We are by no mean out of the woods yet. How much help does the economy need? Here is a comprehensive plan for action.

A Slow-Motion Recession: What Congress Can Do to Help

The labor aspects of post-Keynesian theory have yet to be systematically developed. Still, as this article will attempt to show, it is possible to combine some widely agreed-upon tenets of post-Keynesian thought, such as the importance of the oligopoly sector, the nature of technology in industrialized countries, and the process of price formation by firms, with the work that has been done by American institutional economists, particularly with regard to segmented labor markets. The result of this synthesis is a fairly comprehensive analysis of the labor market that largely follows Keynes in its approach to the demand for labor, and the segmented labor market theorists in its approach to the supply of labor. A post-Keynes-

Post-Keynesian Theory: The Labor Market

This paper examines three questions: 1) How and why have financial models of doing business emerged in the last three decades? 2) What new forms of financial capitalism have become important in the current period? 3) How do new financial intermediaries, such as private equity, and the financial strategies of nonfinancial corporations affect the management of companies and employment outcomes? The paper describes how deregulation and institutional change created the conditions for a new, more powerful role for finance capital in the governance of U.S. companies, and it synthesizes the empirical evidence on the process and outcomes of financialization in large publicly traded corporations, as well as those taken over by private equity. Areas for future research are identified to examine how financialization affects management and employment relations in the postcrisis period.

/pdf/the-impact-of-financialization-on-management-and-employment-3rqbxlo8nc.pdf

Eileen Appelbaum

Papers

Are Lower Private Equity Returns the New Normal

Private Equity at Work

A Slow-Motion Recession: What Congress Can Do to Help

Post-Keynesian Theory: The Labor Market

The Impact of Financialization on Management and Employment Outcomes