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Ann P. Bartel

Columbia Business School, USA

I am happy to be part of the IZA World of Labor project as it encourages communication between academics and practitioners, thereby facilitating a bridge between theory and practice

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Merrill Lynch Professor of Workforce Transformation at Columbia Business School; Director of Columbia Business School's Workforce Transformation Initiative

Research interest

Labor economics, human resource management, organizational strategy, job mobility, technological change

Website

https://www.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/abartel/

Past positions

Professor of Economics, Columbia University Graduate School of Business 1986–2008; Associate Professor of Economics, Columbia University Graduate School of Business, 1979–1986

Qualifications

PhD Economics, Columbia University, 1974

Selected publications

  • “Human capital and productivity in a team environment: Evidence from the healthcare sector.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 6:2 (2014): 231–259 (with N. Beaulieu, C. Phibbs, and P. Stone).

  • “Technological change and the make-or-buy decision.” The Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 30:1 (2014): 165–192 (with S. Lach and N. Sicherman).

  • “Can a work organization have an attitude problem? Workplace effects on employee attitudes and organizational performance.” Labour Economics 18:4 (2011): 411–423 (with R. Freeman, C. Ichniowski, and M. Kleiner).

  • “How does information technology affect productivity? Plant-level comparisons of product innovation, process improvement and worker skills.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 122:4 (2007): 1721–1758 (with C. Ichniowski and K. Shaw).

  • “Ownership versus environment: Why are public sector firms inefficient?” Review of Economics and Statistics 87:1(2005): 135–147 (with A. Harrison).

article(s)

  • Multitasking at work: Do firms get what they pay for?

    Rewarding only one dimension of performance may result in employees ignoring other dimensions

    Ann P. Bartel, May 2017
    To align employees’ interests with the firm’s goals, employers often use performance-based pay, but designing such a compensation plan is challenging because performance is typically multifaceted. For example, a sales employee should be incentivized to sell the company’s product, but a focus on current sales without rewarding the salespeople according to the quality of the product and/or customer service may result in fewer future sales. To solve this problem, firms often increase the number of metrics by which they evaluate their employees, but complex compensation plans may be difficult for employees to understand.
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