Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/100418 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2014: Evidenzbasierte Wirtschaftspolitik - Session: Industrial Organization III No. C11-V2
Publisher: 
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, Kiel und Hamburg
Abstract: 
We analyze the interdependence of human resource management and knowledge management. The service organization is modeled as a queueing network. The optimal number of workers in each division, the amount of customer contact and the wage for each manager is determined. We combine three features within the model. First, each manager may engage in customer contact. We show that although the fraction of time a worker is busy is increasing in rank of the manager, the customer task acceptance rate is not necessarily monotonic. Second, knowledge management is explicitly taken into account. Knowledge acquired by workers depends on the effort of the manager. Third, since this effort is not easily measurable, a moral hazard problem might occur. We discuss a bonus contract under different performance evaluation schemes. If queueing costs increase we find it might be optimal to increase the knowledge and to decrease the number of workers. This implies that decisions are more decentralized. In a numerical example we analyze the elimination of middle management. A attened firm may respond more quickly by pushing decisions downwards. However, we find that the mean response time is higher and the senior manager is more involved in internal tasks.
Subjects: 
organizational design
multi-agent moral hazard
queueing network
Document Type: 
Conference Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
434.98 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.