Specific Human Capital Research Articles

The Effect of Specific Human Capital on Unit Performance A Panel Data Analysis of Basketball Teams

The Effect of Specific Human Capital on Unit Performance A Panel Data Analysis of Basketball Teams

Agency Work in Russia: To Be or Not To Be? (Experience of Russian Enterprises)

The paper reviews the development of temporary agency work in Russia using data from Russian companies in 2008—2011. The results indicate that the number of Russian firms with agency workers has increased while the share of agency workers declined in the period analyzed. Using a probit model the author investigates why firms use temporary agency work. The results of our study demonstrate that the use of agency work is characteristic mainly for small firms. Important factors for firms are also their technical state and financial position, investment in the own development, relation to particular sectors and investment in specific human capital.

Offshoring and occupational specificity of human capital

I document that workers in newly tradable service occupations possess more occupation-specific human capital and are more highly educated than workers in previously tradable occupations. Motivated by this observation, I develop a dynamic equilibrium model with labor market frictions and specific human capital to study the labor adjustment process after a trade shock. When calibrated to match the increase in U.S. trade between 1990 and 2010, the model suggests that (1) output increases immediately after a trade shock and converges quickly to the steady state; (2) labor market institutions likely play a larger role in the adjustment process than specific human capital; (3) the short run distributional effects are small if the labor market is flexible, even in the presence of specific human capital.

Occupational change and status mobility

The impact of changes of the occupational field on the socio-economic status after unemployment has not received much attention in the literature so far. Due to a possible loss of occupation specific human capital the effects are assumed to be detrimental. This seems especially probable if the individual has attained specific human capital in the form of vocational training. A sample from the panel study “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS) was used to analyse the occupational changes of unemployed individuals upon re-entry into the labour market. Compared to occupational changes from employment, changes in the unemployment group have stronger negative effects on the difference in socio-economic status between the last and the current job. The International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI) was used as the status measure. For unemployed individuals without vocational training no significant effect could be found, whereas those with training did incur substantial status losses. In conclusion the loss of occupation specific human capital due to changes of occupation does seem to be detrimental to the socio-economic situation of unemployed individuals after re-employment. This should be considered when applying strict labour market policies possibly pressuring individuals to change their occupation in order to take up employment more quickly.

Coordination Frictions and Job Heterogeneity

We develop a competing auction model of a labor market with a continuum of heterogeneous workers and firms. We estimate this model and compare it to closely related models of price posting using Danish data on wages and productivities. Assuming heterogeneous workers with no comparative advantage, we find that each model gives a reasonable approximation of the statistical moments of both the wage and productivity distribution. A sensitivity analysis then draws out further implications of the theory. We explain how the feasible matchings between workers and firms changes as the worker moves up the job ladder, how the identification of assortative matching is fundamentally different in directed and undirected search models, how our theory accounts for business cycle facts related to inter-temporal changes in job offer distributions, and how our model could also be used to identify the contributions of specific versus general human capital.

What matters, matters differently: a conjoint analysis of the decision policies of angel and venture capital investors

Prior studies have examined the importance of economic, strategic, and human factors to decision policies of angel investors and venture capitalists. As more angels professionalize into angel funds and as markets for technologies and ideas become more competitive, it is becoming more important to compare their decision policies with those of venture capitalists. Drawing upon agency theory, we examine whether economic potential, specific human capital, strategic readiness, and passion matter differently to venture capitalists and angel investors. Our study is an experimental conjoint analysis of more than 2700 investment decisions nested within a mixed sample of venture capitalists and angel investors. We find that strategic readiness for funding and affective passion matter more to angel investors, while economic potential matters more to venture capitalists. We also find that both investor types place similar weights on the specific human capital of entrepreneurs. These findings support the agency view that differences in the investment decision policies of angel investors and venture capitalists can be explained by examining the agency costs, market risks, information asymmetry, and control mechanisms that are structured into angel and venture capital deals.

Team Capital and Productivity: Effect of Unit Specific Nursing Care on Patient Outcome

Performance of an organisation depends on both tangible and intangible human capital of the workers, especially in hospital performance where work is performed by teams rather than individuals. Once a patient is treated by the physician, it is the job of the nursing staff which perform as a team to monitor the condition and recovery of the patient. The unit specific experience of nurses is critical for the critical care and speedy recovery of the patient. Yet, this form of team human capital is ignored as input in health production. This paper explores the effect of the unit specific human capital of the nursing staff measured by the average experience in specific units of a hospital on the duration of stay of patients in the unit using a unique unit level monthly panel data in a general hospital. The fixed effects panel estimates show that the average general human capital of the nurses increases the duration of stay of patients in the units, while the average unit level human capital of the nursing staff reduce their length of stay. This result implies that experienced nurses are extra cautious to ensure full recovery of patients, and the continuous unit level care by the specific nursing team reduces the post-treatment complications and ensures their better health condition. The intangible team specific human capital in specific units contributes to organisational performance.

Who Can Be the Best Innovator?: Firm Specialist versus Science Specialist with Crystallized Skills and Innovation Performance

While human capital theory and upper echelon theory predicts that a firm should innovate better when its CEO possess more human capital, this relationship has been difficult to measure empirically. As a result, little is known about the part that individual CEO plays in explaining innovation performance. In this paper, using a unique dataset on S&P 500 CEO human capital between 1996 and 2003, I examine whether the CEO specific human capital having a critical firm expertise or science expertise affects firm innovation. This paper aims to empirically explore the effects of science specific human capital and firm specific human capital on innovation efficiency. My findings support the idea that CEOs that gather more specific human capital promote better innovation for the firm. I also find that science-specialists CEOs promote innovation performance than firm-specialists CEOs and generalists CEO. My analyses indicate that both types of human capital do matter in the context of innovation. I offer an alternative view of how intangible special human capital promotes firm outcomes by comparative advantages.

Study of the amount of Human Resources Architecture Archetype application at University of Isfahan

Each organization needs specific Human capital which have high unique and strategic value creation .Hence, human resources management of organizations must comply itself with these key people. So, it is clear that organizations in order to gain competitive advantage, must focus on this most important factor, human resources.Which has a strategic role in Excellence of organizations.This research is focused on human resources architecture.Therefore,the purpose of this article was to study the amount of application of the Human Resources Architecture Archetype dimensions, Human Resources practices at University of Isfahan Research method was Descriptive and statistical, population includes all faculty members at University of Isfahan (561 people) in academic year 2011-2012.Sample size using stratified random sampling proportionate to volume was estimated at 231 people. Data collection tool was a researcher made questionnaire designed ​​based on the five-point Likert scale.Its reliability coefficient using Cronbach’s alpha was calculated 0/80.And data analysis was performed by using SPSS statistical software. Findings of human resources architecture archetype at the University of Isfahan is less than average.

The Effects of General and Specific Human Capital on Long–Term Growth and Failure of Newly Founded Businesses

The model developed in this paper draws on human capital theory to explain how newly founded business ventures achieve long–term growth and reduce their chances of failure. Using a sample of 201 business start–ups and assessing growth and venture failure over a period of 12 years, we found that general and specific human capital lead to growth and failure in different ways. More specifically, we found that the effect of general human capital on failure was mediated by growth. Unexpectedly, specific human capital was not related to growth and had direct negative effects on business failure.

“To have and have not”: founders’ human capital and university start-up survival

In order to preserve innovation, knowledge development and diffusion, as well as the transfer of new technologies, the emergence of University Start-Ups (USU) and their survival as a particular dimension of performance represents a relevant research topic. As USU generally have scarce initial resources, the human capital of their founders is one of their main business assets. Although the survival of such firms is supposed to be heavily dependent on the human capital characteristics of their founders, this has not received enough attention in existing research. In this paper we investigate the contribution of founders’ specific human capital characteristics to the survival of USU, building on Gimeno et al. (Adm Sci Q 42:750–783, 1997) threshold model of entrepreneurial exit. We divide USU founders’ specific human capital into three components (entrepreneurship, industry and university) in order to better understand its impact on firm survival. Our theoretical model is empirically tested on a unique sample of Catalan USU through a logistic regression analysis. Coherently with our theoretical reasoning, the results show that industry human capital negatively affect USU survival, while university human capital and entrepreneurship human capital enhance the likelihood of USU survival.

Devaluation, crowding or skill specificity? Exploring the mechanisms behind the lower wages in female professions

A conspicuous finding in research on the gender wage gap is that wages are related to the percentage females in an occupation (percent F). Three mechanisms have been suggested to explain this relationship: a devaluation of women’s work, a crowding of women into a limited number of occupations, and a female disadvantage in the accumulation of specific human capital.In this analysis, based on data from the Swedish Level of Living Survey of 2000 (n=2915), we distinguish between these mechanisms using measures of devaluation (Treiman’s prestige scale), crowding (employee dependence on current employer) and specific human capital (on-the-job training).The results show that all the indicators are related to percent F, but not in a linear fashion, and that the percent F-effect on wages is overstated and misspecified. Female-dominated occupations stand out with lower wages than both male-dominated and gender-integrated occupations and this is not explained by any of our measures. Thus, if the hypotheses on segregation and wages should be sustained, they must be further specified and new measures must be found to prove their worth.

Human Capital and Search–Based Discovery: A Study of High–Tech Entrepreneurship

What types of knowledge and experience enable those who have the desire to start a venture find an appropriate opportunity? To respond to this question, a human capital perspective is used with a sample of 166 founders of new technology ventures in university incubators. General human capital is assessed using experience depth and formal education. Specific human capital is measured using prior start–up experience as well as Shane's knowledge framework of markets, customer problems, and ways to serve markets. Findings reveal key aspects of human capital vital to explaining search–based discovery. Implications for research and entrepreneurship education are drawn.

High Profile Employees and Spin Offs

In knowledge intensive industries, a potential shortage of skilled labor puts the firm0s long-term competitiveness in question and firm survival at risk. As a consequence, firms employ various techniques to promote investments into general and specific human capital of employees to ensure long-term competitiveness. This special issue selects four articles that aim at uncovering how firms manage the inter-play between encouraging human capital investments, incentivizing, and correspondingly governing employees and ensuring the long-term supply of top–performers within organizations. There is one common theme which emerges in all four selected articles: the problem of selecting, retaining, and cultivating high-profile employees. Thus, more specifically, this special issue provides insights into the applicability and suitability of various high-profile recruiting and development strategies within a given firm environment. Falk, Hammermann, Mohnen, and Werner analyze the role of informational asymmetries in labor markets and their interaction with job characteristics that determines hiring success. Their study ‘‘Different Degrees of Informational Asymmetry on Job Markets and Its Impact on Companies’ Recruiting Success’’ use a large survey of German companies. It allows drawing generalizable inferences about various recruiting channels prone to different degrees of information asymmetry: low degrees for internal job markets and employee referrals and high degrees for job advertisements, the Federal Employment Agency and headhunters, among others. They document that monetary aspects of the job are important when job qualities are unobservable for applicants and that work quality attributes gain in

A SURVEY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EDUCATION AND GROWTH WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPING ASIA

This paper surveys the empirical and theoretical link between education and growth in the growth process of Asian countries. Particular attention is paid to the link between education and productivity, and to models that characterize key features of growth processes of Asian countries. Empirical studies show that these key features include: risk of falling into poverty traps, focussing more on technology adoption rather than creation, and possible technology–skill mismatch. The surveyed studies provide policy implications for each of these features. For instance, to avoid the poverty trap and for efficient adoption of technologies, accumulation of human capital — specifically general human capital — and width of human capital are crucial. To avoid the technology–skill mismatch, the speed of technology upgrading should be appropriate to take full advantage of learning-by-doing and the earning potential of the current stock of specific human capital.

Firm Resource Characteristics and Human Capital as Predictors of Exit Choice: An Exploratory Study of SMEs

This research focuses on exit choices within SMEs. In this study, “exit choice” refers to the decision to opt for either liquidation or sale of the firm. The predictions focus on human-capital and firm-resource variables. The hypotheses are tested on a set of 158 owners of small firms, the majority of which are micro-firms with 0–9 employees. The results of a series of binominal logistic regression analyses show that firm-resource characteristics (previous sales turnover, the firm’s independence from its owner, and firm size), together with one aspect of the owner’s specific human capital (the owner’s acquisition experience), predict exit choice. The conclusions have been made with caution, as the dataset is relatively small and the number of predictors is limited.

Internal innovation or external innovation? An organizational context-based analysis in China

The purpose of this paper is to explore how enterprises choose innovation pattern from the perspective of internal organization context. This article distinguishes between internal innovation and external innovation, such that human capital and information structure are the core factors affecting firm's choice decision for internal or external innovation. Based on a survey in China, this study analyzes the relationships among specific human capital, information structure and innovation pattern. Further we also examine the moderating effect of cooperative motivation including R&D motivation, technical learning motivation and strategy motivation. The results suggest that with the degree of specific human capital increase, enterprises tend to choose internal innovation pattern and with the information structure more dispersed/horizontal, enterprises more tend to choose internal innovation pattern. What's more, motives related to research and development, and technology learning are two relatively significant moderators in the relationships among specific human capital, information structure and innovation pattern.

Who benefits from human capital investments? An analysis with cooperative game theory

This paper employs the χ-value to analyse who benefits from investments in general and in specific human capital, the employer or the employee. Within this framework, we replicate the standard results of human capital theory.

Should the Specificity of Human Capital Affect Unemployment Insurance Generosity?

This article examines the argument whereby the more specific the human capital of the workforce is, the less such individuals can expect to receive in benefits if and when they experience unemployment. We present a theoretical model for understanding how the composition of human capital determines the level of unemployment benefits. This model shows that, depending on the scenario chosen for the management of the insurance fund, the proportion of individuals with specific human capital can lead to the replacement rate of optimal unemployment compensation rising or falling.

Make or Buy? Human Capital Accumulation Strategies in European Club Football

When it comes to discussing club football emotions tend to get heated quite easily across the globe. This heterogeneity in likes and dislikes is not only reflected in name or financial possibilities, but also in the clubs approach to building a team. We analyze whether clubs' strategies regarding buying or cultivating players have a discernable effect on their success on the pitch. For the analysis we employ match level data covering five seasons of play in top-flight Dutch and English club football leagues. The results suggest that players' tenure has a positive and significant effect on the probability of winning, but only in the English Premier League. The positive effect we find for the Premier League aligns with theories of firm specific human capital. We hypothesize the lack of significant effects in the Dutch league to be tied to clubs' inability to keep successful players with the club or buy replacements of equal quality on the transfer market, because the club-specific human capital component takes time to accumulate.