We describe the nature, scope and effects of various non-mandated participatory work practices in Japan, the U.S. and Europe through the lens of complementarity in organizations. Specifically, rather than treating each work practice in isolation, we consider it an element of HIWS (High...

This paper sheds light on how changes in the organization of work can help to understand increasing wage inequality. We present a theoretical model in which workers with a wider span of competence (higher level of multitasking) earn a wage premium. Since abilities and opportunities to expand the...

Increased wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers is a stylized fact, which can be observed in many developed countries. Among the explanations advanced for this phenomenon is the increasing globalization, a skill-biased technical progress, restructuring of the firms, and last but...

High-performance work practices are frequently considered to have positive effects on corporate performance, but what do they do for employees? After assessing the correlation between organizational innovation and firm performance, this article investigates whether high-involvement work...

Studies of the effects of technology and globalization on employment and inequality commonly assume that occupations are identical around the world in the job tasks they require. To relax this assumption, we develop a regression-based methodology to predict the country-specific routine task...

The shift away from manual and routine cognitive work, and towards non-routine cognitive work is a key feature of labor markets. There is no evidence, however, if the relative importance of various tasks differs between workers performing seemingly similar jobs in different countries. We develop...

This paper evaluates how an increase in the supply of skilled labor affects task assignment within and between occupations. Guided by a simple theoretical framework, we exploit detailed information about individual workers' tasks from multiple surveys to examine the impact of a twofold rise in...

This paper brings together the modern research on employer power and employee power by empirically examining the effects of unionization on worker earnings, employment, and inequality across differently concentrated markets. Exploiting national tax reforms to union membership dues as exogenous...

A growing literature is concerned with the effects of flexible workplace systems or High Performance Work Organizations (HPWOs) on wages. This paper makes use of a new employer-employee-linked panel data set for Germany to examine the effects of adopting HPWOs on wages as well as on the wage...

Drawing on evidence from the United States and Germany, this paper offers a survey of the effects of worker representation (in unions and works councils) and innovative work practices on firm performance. The focus is on the growing links between these two historically separate literatures. The...