Worker visibility and firms' retention policies

Abstract

In the last two decades, the widespread use of web‐based social networks has led to a higher visibility of workers to the labor market. We theoretically and experimentally analyze the consequences of such increased labor market transparency for the efficiency of job assignments, the wages of workers, and firm profits. Our theoretical results show that higher visibility of workers increases the efficiency of job assignments, leads to a redistribution of income between workers of different ability, and increases overall surplus. Our experimental findings generally support the theoretical results with the exception that increased visibility leads to higher worker turnover such that surplus does not increase.

Precocious Inventors: Early Patenting Success and Lifetime Inventive Performance

“…Information about patent data is traditionally public and easily accessible (Hoisl, 2007a;Toivanen & Väänänen, 2012) Therefore, we can assume that inventors of high-quality patents do not need web-based social networks to gain visibility, and the visibility of inventors should have hardly increased recently, although social networks have generally reduced search costs and increased the job chances for able employees (Dato et al, 2020).…”

Awards Are Career Catalysts for Young Talents in Highly Competitive Job Markets

“…1 This is important because performance differences and the hidden characteristics between individuals competing in these job markets are often minimal, and are sometimes not even measurable by judges (e.g., recruiters). Therefore, it is not surprising that individuals often refer to received awards as succinct resumes of quality and excellence (Gemser et al, 2009) in their CVs, as well as on career networks such as LinkedIn, to distinguish themselves from the competition (Harrison and Jepsen, 2015;Dato et al, 2020).…”

“…on the candidate's career path. In this context, emitting a strong signal of quality to future employers is vital for younger non-executives (Waldman, 1984;Dato et. al, 2020) to increase the probability of being recognized for excellence rather than being dropped from the career/promotion tournament early.…”