This study analyzes the incentive design structure for a sample of mid-level white collar managers (WCM) in large, technology-oriented U.S. firms,whose knowledge-based outputs are difficult to measure objectively. Consistent with the limited availability of objective outcome measures for WCM, we find that the sample firms make significant use of tournament-like implicit promotion incentives to motivate WCM, in addition to using explicit financial incentives. We also find that implicit and explicit incentives are complements rather than substitutes in our setting in which sample firms are generally pot constrained in their ability to adjust implicit and explicit incentives. Finally, while both implicit and explicit incentives increase in job level, explicit incentives increase more rapidly than implicit incentives, resulting in an increase in the intensity of explicit incentives relative to implicit incentives. We attribute this finding to WCM at higher job levels exercising greater influence on organization performance, making organization-level performance measures more informative. Overall, the results are consistent with the availability of objective performance measures for WCM influencing the structure of their implicit promotion and explicit financial incentives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Innovation is a critical organizational outcome for its potential to generate competitive advantage. While the contribution of knowledge workers to the generation of innovation is widely recognized, little is known about how organizational incentive mechanisms stimulate or inhibit these workers' behaviors that promote innovation. This study examines the relationship between pay dispersion in R&D groups and firm innovation using employee-level compensation data in US high-technology firms. The results show that (1) pay dispersion in R&D groups is negatively related to firm innovation and (2) this negative relationship is alleviated in firms with greater financial slack. This study contributes to the innovation literature by illuminating the implications of organizational incentive systems for successful innovation. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Whether or not to adopt and how extensively to use a newly legitimized practice are discrete decisions made by firms undergoing institutional change. The aim of this paper is to identify the distinct effects of economic, social, and political factors on the adoption of performance-related pay practices and their coverage (i.e. the proportion of employees covered by the practices) by integrating institutional and agency theories. An empirical analysis is performed with a unique sample of Korean firms that experienced the East Asian financial crisis of 1997. The results show that while performance-related pay adoption was influenced by economic and social factors, performance-related pay coverage was related to political factors as well as economic and social factors. This finding suggests that while firms adopt performance-related pay practices in search of legitimacy, they do not blindly imitate such practices but rather proactively adapt them based on economic efficiency considerations. This study makes valuable contributions to research on institutionalism and remuneration by empirically identifying the conditions under which a pay practice adopted for social legitimacy fits or fails to fit the economic needs of the adopters.

While scholars have long recognised the influence of firm decisions on aspects of compensation (e.g. pay level and pay mix), prior compensation studies offer an ambiguous understanding regarding their scope. Some studies argue that firms customise compensation decisions according to employee groups, whereas others assume that firm compensation decisions apply uniformly throughout a firm. To address this research gap, the current study analyses pay levels and pay mixes for R&D employees and administrative employees in US high-technology firms. Our empirical analyses show that firms make distinct compensation decisions for these two job families, but these decisions are ultimately consistent. These findings highlight firms' intention to strike a balance between customising compensation systems according to employee groups and maintaining internal consistency. Our findings add interesting insights to the strategic HRM and talent management literatures, which claim that firms should differentiate among employees when designing HRM systems. Contact: Yoshio Yanadori, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, 2053 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada. Email: yoshio.yanadori@sauder.ubc.ca

We investigate compensation management in in-house and outsourced call centres with original establishment-level data collected in Canada. Our analysis reveals that both customer service representatives (CSRs) and managers employed in outsourced call centres earn 91 per cent of the cash pay earned by their in-house counterparts. Lower cash pay levels in outsourced call centres are related to higher CSR quit rates and absenteeism. Although CSR cash pay is associated with improved workforce performance, the disparity in cash pay between in-house and outsourced call centres does not result in a significant difference in workforce performance.

Using the compensation information from 10 subsidiaries of a US-based financial multinational corporation (MNC) in the Asia Pacific region, I have quantitatively explored how one MNC balanced two competing logics: localization, which allows variation across subsidiaries, and strategic alignment, which promotes standardization among subsidiaries. My empirical analysis has revealed that the way this MNC balanced the two logics varied according to the aspects of compensation management and employee groups. While this MNC incorporated local contexts when determining pay level in its foreign subsidiaries, it primarily emphasized the strategic alignment logic when determining pay mix in its subsidiaries. This MNC emphasized the strategic alignment logic to a greater extent when determining the pay level for managers than it did when determining the pay level for non-managerial employees.

Using firm-level data from Japan, this study examines the effects of four commonly used work and family practices on employee turnover: flextime, maternity leave, child care leave, and nursing care leave. Overall, we find statistically significant associations between work and family practices and female employee turnover in Japan. In stark contrast, we do not find such a statistically significant linkage between work and family practices and male employee turnover. As such, this study highlights the potential moderating effect of individual characteristics such as gender on the relationship between work and family practices and employee attitudes and behaviours.

Using Japanese firms' data, this study shows that voluntary turnover ratio is negatively related to firm tabour productivity. While recent studies have reported the negative influence of turnover on organizational performance (Kacmar et al., 2006; Shaw et al., 2005a), they analysed only US samples. Our study contributes to researchers' efforts to generalize the relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance. Turnover is detrimental to labour productivity as it reduces the stock of firm-specific human capital that a firm retains. Findings suggest that firm average employee tenure mediates the relationship between voluntary turnover and labour productivity.