Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may Temporary Contracts and Employee EffortAxel Engellandt Regina T. Riphahn The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent, nonprofit limited liability company (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) supported by the Deutsche Post AG. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. The current research program deals with (1) mobility and flexibility of labor, (2) internationalization of labor markets, (3) welfare state and labor market, (4) labor markets in transition countries, (5) the future of labor, (6) evaluation of labor market policies and projects and (7) general labor economics. May 2003 D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available on the IZA website (www.iza.org) or directly from the author. ABSTRACT Temporary Contracts and Employee EffortTemporary contracts provide employers with a tool to screen potential new employees and have been shown to provide "stepping stones" into permanent employment for workers. For both reasons workers on temporary contracts have an incentive to provide more effort than permanent employees. Using indicators for unpaid overtime work and absences taken from the Swiss Labor Force Survey we present evidence that temporary workers indeed provide higher effort than permanent employees: Their probability of working unpaid overtime exceeds that of permanently employed workers by 60 percent. We show the heterogeneity of this effect across different types of temporary contracts, investigate differences between men and women, and discuss the relevance of adverse selection into temporary employment. Using data from the Swiss Labor Force Survey (SLFS) we compare the behavior of 1 The subsequent discussion of contract-based incentives will exclude payment issues.2 See e.g. OECD 1999, Cahuc and Po...
The authors investigate the effect of managerial performance evaluation styles on employee work effort. Using panel data on 4,080 employees in a Swiss unit of an international company for the period 1999-2002, they test two hypotheses using paid and unpaid overtime work as effort indicators. The company applies two performance-based remuneration mechanisms: an individual "surprise" bonus and one in which salary is affected by the extent to which an individual has reached personalized targets. The authors hypothesize that effort is higher in departments in which individual performance evaluations are more flexible over time as well as when surprise bonuses are used more frequently. Both hypotheses are supported, and the estimated effects are substantial. Increases in rating flexibility or bonus payments by one standard deviation above the mean increase average overtime hours by more than 20%. The findings are robust and suggest that surprise bonuses and flexible performance evaluations over time provide effective incentives. Contractsthat determine salary based on subjective evaluations have incentive effects that differ from those of other types of performance pay such as piece rates or commissions. This is important since subjective performance measures are increasingly used in organizations in which job complexity is high, individual productivity is hard to measure, and compliance with the norms of firm * Axel Engellandt is a professional statistical programmer in the field of validation and design of credit rating procedures.
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