Roberto Antonietti, Davide Antonioli and Paolo Pini
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the link between flexible pay systems (FPS) and labor productivity, also looking at which factors drive firms to adopt such wage schemes.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the link between flexible pay systems (FPS) and labor productivity, also looking at which factors drive firms to adopt such wage schemes.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is conducted on an original sample extracted from a firm-level survey on manufacturing firms with at least 20 employees in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. A two-stage model is adopted to mitigate potential self-selection into FPS adoption.
Findings
The results show that the adoption of a FPS is linked to the unions’ involvement and organizational changes within firms, supporting the idea that a FPS is not simply a risk-sharing mechanism, but part of a more complex strategy to increase workers’ flexibility and autonomy. The relationship between FPS and labor productivity concerns a traditional form of premiums intended for individual employees and linked simply to “effort improvement and control” motives and to the firm’s “ability to pay.” Productivity also increases after adopting ex-ante payment systems that focus on developing employees’ participation and competences.
Research limitations/implications
The main findings have two important implications. In the personnel economics literature, the authors stress the complementarity among different organizational practices and their role in making firms more competitive. The authors also attribute an additional role to flexible payment systems, which can be seen not just as a way to make employees work harder, but also as the means by which the effect of organizational changes on labor productivity materializes.
Social implications
From the policy perspective, the results show that non-price incentives are as important as price incentives for achieving higher productivity targets. Firms’ competitiveness is the outcome not only of a higher worker effort and lower labor costs, but also of the adoption of managerial and organizational innovations to promote skill development, learning, and union involvement.
Originality/value
The analysis has two elements of novelty: first, the distinction between a broad array of human resource management practices in both production and labor management; and second, the analysis of different types of flexible payment systems: ex post, ex ante, individual, team-based, and mixed.
Details
Keywords
Valentina Bonello, Claudia Faraone, Francesca Gambarotto, Luca Nicoletto and Giulio Pedrini
This paper aims to provide a comprehensive vision of the formation of intra-metropolitan clusters triggered by the deindustrialization of an urban area, namely, the district of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide a comprehensive vision of the formation of intra-metropolitan clusters triggered by the deindustrialization of an urban area, namely, the district of Porto Marghera in the metropolitan area of Venice and propose possible regeneration scenarios based on intra-metropolitan clustering.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts a multi-disciplinary approach and relies on both descriptive and qualitative evidence to show the economic transition occurred in the area of Porto Marghera in recent years.
Findings
Evidence shows the rise of two potential clusters in the KIBS and the creative industries in a well-delimited fringe area placed at the boundary between the urban centre and the core of the deindustrialized zone. Such clustering processes have been, however, characterized by two different and in some way alternative paths. The former stems from the combination of two autonomous entrepreneurial ideas that complemented one to each other. The latter relies on university-industry collaboration and on the presence of places of informal exchanges that proved to support personal networking, knowledge exchange and business opportunities.
Research limitations/implications
This paper suggests that local development policies could leverage on the presence of social entrepreneurs to substitute the creation of amenities and the provision of public goods in fragile territories.
Originality/value
This paper shows that, in presence of specific spatial conditions, deindustrialization can stimulate the formation of new intra-metropolitan through both top-down and bottom-up agglomeration process.
Details
Keywords
Roberto Godoy Fernandes, Luciano Ferreira da Silva and Leonardo Vils
The purpose of this paper is to verify how distributed cognition enhances collaborative problem-solving in the context of projects.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to verify how distributed cognition enhances collaborative problem-solving in the context of projects.
Design/methodology/approach
Using qualitative research and in-depth interviews, a sample of 32 project managers with experience in traditional and agile methods acting in Brazil and internationally participated in the research process. The analysis process, utilising coding techniques, involved stages: open, axial, coding and selective coding. These stages encompassed the evaluation of categories based on a hierarchy, in order to determine an appropriate level of abstraction that properly explains theoretical findings.
Findings
The results indicate that distributed team cognition is significant for collaborative problem-solving. The data from the interviews allowed the proposal of a model of cognition, and the identification of the elements that support it.
Practical implications
Understand how aspects of distributed team cognition can impact the behaviours of the project professional and contribute to problem-solving in the project environment.
Originality/value
The elements observed affects the collaborative problem-solving by presenting a model of distributed cognition, which is composed by directed communication, collective interaction, trust building and collaborative behaviour.