Increasingly, firms are considering the adoption of new work practices, such as problem-solving teams, enhanced communication with workers, employment security, flexibility in job assignments, training workers for multiple jobs, and greater reliance on incentive pay. This paper provides...

We study how transition has affected human resource policies of a Russian heavy industry firm. Our data set contains personnel files of 1538 white-collar workers over 17 years: from 1984 to 2000. We find career paths before the first year of Gaidar's reforms, 1992, when Russian transition to a...

This paper estimates the effects of systems of human resource management policies on the performance of U.S. manufacturing businesses. OLS results for labor productivity and Tobin's q models both reveal that nonunion businesses that employ a human resource management system with flexible job...

We study the allocation and productivity consequences of training production line supervisors in soft skills via a randomized controlled trial. Consistent with standard practice for training investments within firms, we asked middle managers -- who sit above supervisors in the hierarchy -- to...