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Hideo Owan

University of Tokyo and Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry, Japan

I am very excited about being a part of this IZA initiative to compile useful insights from numerous literatures. This also makes me realize how much (and how little) we know about very important real-world issues

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Professor, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Research interest

Personnel economics, organizational economics, labor economics, and industrial organization

Website

https://www.rieti.go.jp/users/owan-hideo/index_en.html

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Faculty Fellow, Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry, Japan

Past positions

Professor, Graduate School of International Management, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan; Assistant Professor, Olin School of Business, Washington University, USA

Qualifications

PhD Economic Policy and Analysis, Stanford University, 1999

Selected publications

  • "Team incentives and worker heterogeneity: An empirical analysis of the impact of teams on productivity and participation." Journal of Political Economy 111:3 (2003): 465–497 (with B. H. Hamilton and J. A. Nickerson).

  • “Promotion, turnover, earnings and firm-sponsored training.” Journal of Labor Economics 22:4 (2004): 955–978.

  • “Specialization, multiskilling and allocation of decision rights.” Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms 12 (2011).

  • "Market characteristics, intra-firm coordination, and the choice of human resource management systems: Theory and evidence." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (December 2011) (with T. Kato).

  • “The impact of group contract and governance structure on performance—Evidence from college classrooms.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (Forthcoming) (with Z. Hansen, J. Pan, and S. Sugawara).

article(s)

  • How should teams be formed and managed?

    How teams are chosen and how they are compensated can determine how successfully they solve problems and benefit the firm

    Hideo Owan, August 2014
    The keys to effective teamwork in firms are (1) carefully designed team-formation policies that take into account what level of diversity of skills, knowledge, and demographics is desirable and (2) balanced team-based incentives. Employers need to choose policies that maximize the gains from teamwork through task coordination, problem solving, peer monitoring, and peer learning. Unions and labor market regulations may facilitate or hinder firms’ attempts at introducing teams and team-based incentives.
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