Courses NonDegree Display 2018-2019

Course Description To PDF
Course title Job Performance and the Employment Relationship
Course code EBC2138
ECTS credits 6,5
Assessment None
Period
Period Start End Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri
2 29-10-2018 21-12-2018 X/E X/E
Level Intermediate
Coordinator Steffen Kuenn
For more information: s.kuenn@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Language of instruction English
Goals
Understanding of a firm's trade-offs I recruiting, rewarding and developing workers
Understanding trade-offs in job design and allocation of workers to tasks and jobs
Understanding of the economic principles that can be used for these and related HRM decisions and policies
Skills how to use and refine such personnel policies in the practice of a firm
Description
To improve the performance of a firm, managers have to find tools to hire the right people, to sort them into the right job, to motivate them to do their work well, to develop their skills through formal and informal learning and to cooperate efficiently with co-workers. Firms that stimulate one aspect might do so at the cost of others. Managers therefore face many complex trade-offs in their personnel policies.
In this course economic tools to understand these trade-offs will be discussed and illustrated with examples how to apply them in practice.
Many questions are asked about the employment relationship, such as: Why should pay vary across workers within firms – and how "compressed" should pay be within firms? Should firms pay workers for their performance on the job or for their skills or hours of work? How are pay and promotions structured across jobs to induce optimal effort from employees? How to design jobs and performance measures? Why use teams and how are teams used most effectively? How should all these human resource management practices, from incentive pay to teamwork, be combined within firms?
Literature
Lazear E.P. and M. Gibbs (2015), Personnel Economics in Practice, 3rd ed, Wiley, New York.
The textbook is supplemented with a few academic journal articles.
Prerequisites
Knowledge and understanding of introductory microeconomics, like the first-year course EBC1009, Economics and Business and EBC1010, Microeconomics, the latter being based on (parts of)
Perloff J.M. (2011), Microeconomics, Pearson, Addison Wesley, Boston.
An advanced level of English
Teaching methods (indicative; course manual is definitive) PBL / Presentation / Lecture / Assignment / Groupwork
Assessment methods (indicative; course manual is definitive) Final Paper / Participation / Written Exam
Evaluation in previous academic year For the complete evaluation of this course please click "here"
This course belongs to the following programmes / specialisations
Bachelor Economics and Business Economics - Emerging Markets Economics Electives
Bachelor Economics and Business Economics - International Business Economics Economics Electives
Bachelor International Business Economics Electives
SBE Exchange Bachelor Bachelor Exchange Courses
SBE Exchange Master Bachelor Exchange Courses
SBE Non Degree Courses Bachelor Courses