James N. Baron

Yale University | YU · Department of Management

Economists have argued that employers sometimes pay above-market premiums (efficiency wages) in order to attract, motivate, and/or retain valued personnel. Drawing on recent work examining reciprocity and gift exchange, this paper proposes the notion of “empathy wages,” in which the effect of the premium paid depends on the extent to which it elici...

The case describes the economic and cultural models that have led to the success of Keller Williams Realty. By 2006 Keller Williams was one of the most profitable real estate companies in the United States (if not the most profitable); in addition it was on its way to becoming one of the largest in terms of number of agents (over 70,000). The case...

This case is a follow up to Keller Williams (A) HR-29A, and explains the actions taken by Keller Williams in response to the residential real estate market downturn in 2008 and 2009. The case explains the programs and initiatives put in place by the company to boost agent count, increase productivity, and reduce expenses throughout the organization...

Perspectives on inequality differ greatly regarding whether the logic of bureaucracy undermines sex-based ascription in work organizations by reducing subjectivity in personnel decisions, or instead merely serves to obscure or “scientize” inequality. Past research has tended to operationalize bureaucratization in terms of the adoption of formal pro...

We examine how the life chances and financial performance of nascent high-technology firms were affected by two kinds of organizational changes: altering founders' blueprints for the employment relation and replacing a founder--chief executive officer (CEO) by an outsider. We argue that both events destabilize organizations but that changes in empl...

This study analyzes 1973 Quality of Employment Survey data to examine how work-place gender composition affects women's work-related psychological well-being. With individual, job, and organizational characteristics controlled, women in predominantly-male work settings are the most satisfied with their jobs. This supports theories that women's inte...

Why would managers abandon pay-for-performance plans they initiated with great hopes? Why would employees celebrate this decision? This article explores why managers made their decisions in 12 of 13 pay-for-performance “experiments” at Hewlett-Packard in the mid-1990s. We find that managers thought the costs of these programs to be higher than the...

This paper argues for greater attention to employment-based organizational identities in ecological theory and research. I define and explore three dimensions of particular relevance to labor market identities: sharpness/resonance, focus and authenticity. The paper offers some speculations regarding: (i) when labor market identities are most decisi...

This essay reviews recent theory and research on organizations and social stratification, focusing on two dimensions of inequality that are affected by organizations and their environments: (a) how rewards and opportunities vary as a function of organizational attributes and (b) how enterprises differ in their criteria for matching workers and jobs...

Over the last seven years, the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies has tracked a large sample of high-technology start-ups in California's Silicon Valley. The project has examined how the founders of those enterprises approached key organizational and human resource challenges in the early days of building their companies, and how it affected th...

[Excerpt] Organizational theories, especially ecological perspectives, emphasize the disruptive effects of change. However, the mechanisms producing these effects are seldom examined explicitly. This article ex-amines one such mechanism-employee turnover. Analyzing a sample of high-technology start-ups, we show that changes in the employment models...

This article outlines a comprehensive approach to analyzing organizational career inequality, emphasizing interdependencies among multiple avenues of attainment: job shifts and lateral moves, within and between organizations; changes in salary and salary ceilings associated with job shifts; and within-job salary advancement. Hypotheses regarding ho...

Considers the impact of founding conditions on the later administration and management of technology startups in Silicon Valley. Data were collected in 1994-1995 by survey and interviews with 173 technology firms that had at least 10 employees and were no more than 10 years old. This research draws on the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies. The...

This paper examines the impact of organizational founding conditions on several facets of bureaucratization--managerial intensity, the proliferation of specialized managerial and administrative roles, and formalization of employment relations. Analyzing information on a sample of technology start-ups in California's Silicon Valley, we characterize...

This book examines transaction cost economics, the influential theoretical perspective on organizations and industry that was the subject of Oliver Williamson’s seminal book, Markets and Hierarchies (1975). Written by leading economists, sociologists, and political scientists, the essays collected here reflect the fruitful intellectual exchange tha...

This paper examines how the structure and content of individuals' networks on the job affect intraorganizational mobility. Consistent with prior research, we find that mobility is enhanced by having large, dense networks of informal ties for acquiring information and resources. However, studies of networks and organizational careers have overlooked...

Uses information regarding the process oforganization-building to identify several distinct models for organizingemployment and work, in order to gain insight into how organizational designersapproach the issue of consistency and complementarities in human resourcesmanagement. Two goals of this research are to understand: (a) how earlydecisions reg...

[Excerpt] This paper considers processes of organizational imprinting in a sample of 100 young, high technology companies. It examines the effects of a pair of initial conditions: the founders' models of the employment relation and their business strategies. Our analyses indicate that these two features were well aligned when the firms were founded...

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Links organizational change to social inequality by examining how organizational dynamics affected rates of gender integration among California state agencies between 1979 and 1985. The analysis draws on theories of organizations and organization-environment relations to identify factors that influence economic, political, and social pressures for...

Economic penalties against jobs employing disproportionate numbers of women or nonwhites vary across organizational context and occupational type. Analyses of prescribed pay rates for jobs in the California state civil service in 1985 suggest that work done disproportionately by women and nonwhites is devalued most in positions that are older, not...

This paper suggests how formal models of employment relations in economics might be enriched by paying greater attention to various themes emphasized in recent sociological and social psychological research. A review of the sociology of work highlights some areas where formal economic models of employment relations diverge from empirical reality. F...

This paper examines historical differences in personnel practices among U.S. industries to explore the roots of modern "bureaucratic" work control. We report multivariate analyses of data describing organizational personnel practices, collected by the National Industrial Conference Board between 1935 and 1946. We find evidence of three early strand...

This paper develops and tests hypotheses about the characteristics of organizations and their environments that favor the proliferation of detailed job titles to describe work roles. A method for measuring the proliferation of job titles is proposed and applied to a sample of 368 diverse work organizations. It is hypothesized that proliferation is...

This paper charts the transformation of the employment relationship in different industries during the second quarter of this century and is based on a representative sampling of U.S. business organizations. The first section documents changes in the control systems that prevailed in U.S. industries between the Depression and the end of World War 1...

This paper analyzes data describing jobs in 100 establishments in order to test hypotheses about the characteristics of jobs and organizations associated with the structure of internal promotion ladders. The diversity of labor market arrangements found within the organizations indicates only weak support for hypotheses linking internal labor market...

This article develops and tests hypotheses about the determinants of sex segregation in occupations employing both men and women, analyzing data on a diverse sample of California establishments. In the few instances in which men and women perform similar work roles, the jobs are typically done in distinct organizational settings, and when an enterp...

Past research nds that males outperform females in competitive situations. Using data from multiple-round math tournaments, we verify this nding during the initial round of competition. The performance gap between males and females, however, disappears after the rst round. In later rounds, only math ability (not gender) serves as a signi cant predi...

Stratification researchers have increasingly embraced segmentation perspectives, dividing industries into groups believed to exhibit different work arrangement and opportunity structures. Previous research, however, indicates only limited support for those predictions. This paper assesses the utility of segmentation approaches by conceptualizing an...

This paper examines the relationship between work organization and stratification processes, specifically, the dimensions and determinants of workers' technical roles. Four dimensions of worker-technology relations emphasized in previous research are analyzed: skill and variety, diversity, technical interdependence, and control over work pacing. We...

This essay examines the shift toward "structural" explanations in recent studies of inequality. After reviewing this body of research and some of its shortcomings, we examine its theoretical underpinnings, comparing "structuralist" perspectives on work organization derived from institutional economics and neo-Marxism to more orthodox accounts based...

This paper examines how founding conditions shape subsequent organizational evolution— specifically, the proliferation of management and administrative jobs. Analyzing quantitative and qualitative information on a sample of young technology start-ups in California’s Silicon Valley, we examine the enduring imprint of two aspects of firms’ founding c...