To gain workforce support and commitment, organisations should offer remuneration and rewards that are internally and externally equitable, as inequity in remuneration is the source of employee discontent and turnover. To succeed, organisations have to communicate the total value of rewards allocated to employees. Communication is the foundation of reward management and organisational success. Communication helps employees to understand that the rewards they receive are worth having. Remuneration and rewards communicate the value that organisations place on their employees. To deliver the proper messages, remuneration objectives and strategies should be aligned with the overall business strategy of the organisation. Alignment enables organisations to deliver the right type of rewards to the right people, at the right time, and for the right reasons. The only way the organisation can deliver the correct reward and remuneration, is to implement a total reward system together with a total pay system. Effective total pay system covers base pay, skills and competency pay, variable performance pay, recognition, and benefits. Total reward system cover investment in people, development and training, performance management, and career management. To motivate and retain employees, and to improve organisation’s profitability, a right mix of total pay and total rewards should be made available to employees as employees’ needs differ. With this information, an empirical study was developed and conducted at Lobels Bread in Zimbabwe. The results of this survey indicated that Lobels Bread uses traditional base pay system and benefits as a way of motivating and retaining its employees. This pay system seems to be insufficient to motivate and retain employees. To motivate and retain employees, the company should implement a total reward system, which includes total pay system, investment in people, career enhancement, open communications, involvement, and performance management.

Notre travail a cherché à éclairer une partie des éléments qui peuvent agir sur la productivité du travail, notamment les contrats incitatifs, les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TICS) et les pratiques organisationnelles. Nous avons naturellement tenu compte de la présence d’asymétries d’information, susceptibles d’influencer la relation d’emploi et les choix de l’entreprise en matière de pratiques organisationnelles et d’introduction des technologies de l’information et de la communication. La thèse se divise donc en deux grandes parties : la première se penche sur les contrats incitatifs optimaux ainsi que sur l’effet des différents modes de rémunération sur la productivité. La deuxième partie, quant à elle, met l’accent sur l’introduction et les effets des TICS et des pratiques organisationnelles. Les résultats empiriques tirés de la première partie montrent que l’effet de la rémunération sur la productivité dépend de la forme de rémunération choisie et de la catégorie socioprofessionnelle des employés concernés. Ils mettent également en évidence un effet de la durée du contrat de travail ainsi que du taux d’endettement à court terme sur la productivité. Les résultats issus des études faites dans le cadre de la deuxième partie de la thèse indiquent que les entreprises ont eu besoin d’un temps d’adaptation, entre 1998 et 1999, avant que les effets positifs des TICS et des pratiques organisationnelles puissent se répercuter sur la productivité des salariés. Leurs effets sont intervenus plus rapidement en 2004, compte tenu de ces délais d’accumulation du capital humain. Enfin, nous avons également pu montrer que le gain de productivité s’avère plus important si l’entreprise choisit de mettre en œuvre les deux changements en même temps. / Our work has tried to identify some elements which may have an effect on labor productivity, among which the incentive contracts, the information and communication’s technologies (ICT) and the organizational practices. We took into account the presence of asymmetric information, susceptible to influence the employment relationships and the firm’s choices concerning the organizational practices or the introduction of ICT. The dissertation is divided into two parts: the first one considers the optimal incentive contracts as well as the effect of various remuneration systems on labor productivity. The second part is devoted to the introduction of ICT and the organizational practices. The empirical results drawn from the first part show that the remuneration’s effect on productivity depends on the adopted type of payment and on the social and occupational group of the beneficiaries. They also indicate that the length of the employment’s contract and the rate of short term debts have an effect on productivity. The results obtained within the framework of the second part of the dissertation show that the employees needed some time to adapt, between 1998 and 1999, before the positive effects of the ICT and organizational practices could appear on their productivity. However given the delays of human capital’s accumulation, the effect on labor productivity of various ICT and organizational practices occurred more quickly in 2004. Finally, we showed that the productivity increases more if the company chooses to undertake both changes at the same time.

This thesis examines the evolution of China's economy and the competitive position of its exports in the international market. The thesis explores whether China is losing its competitive edge in export to the group of developing countries called Post China 16. First chapter identifies macroeconomic variables that significantly influence exports of a specific economy. Second chapter discusses the development of selected economic variables in Post China 16 economies. It studies whether the development of selected variables reveals possible changes in the competitive position of China and selected developing countries. Final part of the thesis develops an econometric model that tests the influence of selected variables on development of exports across several industries of The Post China 16 economies. Results confirm that most of the variables influence exports as the theory predicts and that the influence is higher in some industries than others. However, the model has limitations due to the shortcomings of the data.

The objective of this thesis is to develop a conceptual design of a computerized environment for detailed design of construction activities associated with projects characterized by significant repetition. High-rise building construction is used as the example of repetitive construction projects. The construction cycle design of a typical floor structure is studied to gain an understanding of the difficulty and complexity involved in the activity design process. Modeling techniques currently used in construction planning, modeling techniques developed in the field of operations research, and assembly line balancing techniques used in industrial engineering are reviewed to determine their applicability for detailed construction cycle design. Using the concept of decision support systems developed in the fields of management science and knowledge engineering for solving ill-structured and ill-defined problems, a conceptual design of a decision support system for construction cycle design is developed. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Civil Engineering, Department of / Graduate

M.A. / Social, political and economical changes in modern society, as well as the growing need for aid and assistance, have resulted in the questioning of the work procedures within the social services of the Dutch Reformed Church. This has motivated the researcher to do research on the productivity and effectiveness of the Christelik-maatskaplike raad (CMR) as a branch of the "Sinodale Kommissie vir die Diens van Barmhartigheid" of Northern Transvaal. The investigation was undertaken by identifying a strategic productivity model in the literature and applying that model to the CMR of Pretoria. A qualitative, as well as a quantitative approach has been used and the study can be described as exploratory/descriptive. The literature ·study indicated that not only physical but also human factors influence the productivity within the organisation. A description was given of the physical set-up of the organisation and of the attempts that have been made to improve productivity. It was found that a large number of these factors do indeed play a role in the organisation. The findings showed that social workers are aware of the necessary changes that must occur to create a better productivity function. Recommendations were made concerning the changes of the work procedure of the CMR, in order to improve the quality of the services rendered and to eliminate the factors that have had a detrimental influence on the productivity of the organisation.

This study examined the effects of switching from an incentive pay system solely based on productivity to a scorecard-based incentive pay system. Performance of staff and senior accountants was analyzed across three departments for a two-year baseline and a three-year intervention period. Results showed that percent of charge hour goal remained high during the study. Once the scorecard-based incentive system was implemented, performance on the other line items increased or remained at or above goal levels. Incentive payouts were generally higher under the second incentive plan than under the first for top performers. Possible explanations for data trends, weaknesses of the measures within the scorecard, measure/line item alternatives and implications for future research are also discussed.

This dissertation analyzes how cultural and behavioral frictions affect decision-making in labor markets of developing economies. It studies factors that have received relatively little attention in economics—namely concerns about preserving identity, cognitive strain from financial stress, and gender norms—and examines their impacts on labor supply and productivity. Field experiments in the state of Odisha, India are used to provide direct empirical evidence on these relationships. Chapter 1 investigates how identity—one's concept of self—influences economic behavior in the labor market, focusing on the effect of caste identity on labor supply. In the experiment, casual laborers belonging to different castes choose whether to take up various real job offers. All offers involve working on a default manufacturing task and an additional task. The additional task changes across offers, is performed in private, and differs in its association with specific castes. Workers' average take-up rate of offers is 23 percentage points lower if offers involve working on tasks that are associated with castes other than their own. This gap increases to 47 pp if the castes associated with the relevant offers rank lower than workers' own in the caste hierarchy. Responses to job offers are invariant to whether or not workers' choices are publicized, suggesting that the role of identity itself—rather than social image—is paramount. Using a supplementary experiment, I show that 43% of workers refuse to spend ten minutes working on tasks associated with other castes, even when offered ten times their daily wage. Results indicate that identity may be an important constraint on labor supply, contributing to misallocation of talent in the economy. Chapter 2—joint work with Supreet Kaur, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Frank Schilbach—tests for a direct causal impact of financial strain on worker productivity. The experiment randomly varies timing of income receipt among laborers who earn piece rates for manufacturing tasks: some workers receive their wages on earlier dates, altering when cash constraints are eased while holding overall wealth constant. Workers increase productivity by 5.3% on average in the days after cash receipt. The impacts are concentrated among poorer workers in the sample, who increase output by over 10%. This effect of cash on hand on productivity is not explained by mechanisms such as gift exchange, trust in the employer, or nutrition. The chapter also presents positive evidence that productivity increases are mediated through lower attentional errors in production, indicating a role for improved cognition after cash receipt. Finally, directing workers’ attention to their finances via a salience intervention produced mixed results—consistent with concerns about priming highlighted in the literature. Results indicate a direct relationship between financial constraints and worker productivity and suggest that psychological channels mediated through attention play a role in this relationship. Chapter 3 examines whether gender norms lead women to hold back their potential in the labor market. While the existing literature has shown that women tend to earn less than their husbands, there is limited direct evidence on whether women actively avoid earning more than their spouses and the determinants of such behavior. The experiment engages married couples working as casual laborers in a short-term manufacturing job that pays piece-rate on output. The experiment provides women an extra hour to work without this difference being salient, making it likely that they could earn more than their husbands. After husbands finish piece-rate production, women are randomized into one of three conditions in which 1) the wife is informed of her husband’s production and expects both spouses to learn how much each spouse has produced, 2) the wife is informed of her husband’s production and expects that only she will learn how much each spouse has produced, or 3) both spouses are only informed of their joint total production. Results show that women in the last two conditions achieve on average one hour’s worth of production more than that of their husbands, suggesting that women do not face intrinsic concerns about earning more than their husbands. However, this productivity gap substantially decreases when husbands are expected to learn about individual production. This finding suggests that norms in marriage may be an important factor contributing to gender inequality in the labor market.

The construction sector is one of the most important industries for the economy in Sweden. Between 2010 to November of 2020, there has been an increase in employment in the construction industry by 35.4 percent. In 2019 the Swedish construction sector was valued at EUR 53.3 billion, where the construction sub-sector makes up 47.6 percent (European Construction Sector Observatory - Country profile Sweden, 2020).  The construction industry is a fundamental part of society, whereas labor productivity, which represents the quantity of work performed per hour (Park 2006), is a vital element in the process of construction. Gunduz et al. (2020) state that labor consumes a significant amount of cost in construction projects, thus labor productivity is a determinator of cost optimization i.e., the process of making something as good or effective as possible (Cambridge Online Dictionary, n.d.). The benefit of productivity is seen as reduced construction time and cost (Fox, Marsh & Cockerham, 2010). Moreover, a lack of effective management activity towards construction resources can potentially decrease labor productivity. Thus, the familiarity of project managers with labor productivity factors is of major importance (Shehata & El-Gohary, 2011) and contributes to project success (Gunduz & Abu-Hijleh, 2020).

This dissertation studies the role of occupation-specific human capital in explaining the long-run decline in labor market dynamics observed in the United States for the past four decades. Chapter 1 presents empirical facts on labor market outcomes by required occupation-specific training. This is to provide evidence that (i) required length of occupation-specific training is a proxy for the specificity of human capital to perform the occupation and that (ii) increasing occupation specificity has led to the decline in labor market dynamics. First, I find from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and O*NET that for the past four decades, within occupations, there has been an increase the amount of time needed to become trained in the occupation. I then find from the Survey of Income and Program Participation that the average wage loss experienced by occupation switchers after unemployment increases when their occupation held before unemployment has faced over time an increase in occupation-specific training. I take this as evidence that the observed increase in occupation-specific training over time has made human capital less transferable across occupations. I then proceed to use the Monthly Current Population Survey, combined with the required length of occupation-specific training by occupation from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and O*NET, to do a shift-share decomposition of the decline in labor market outcomes. The decline in the aggregate job separation rate and the increase in unemployment duration is accounted for mostly by the increase in specific training within occupations. Motivated by my empirical analysis, in Chapter 2, I then build a search-and-matching model to learn how the increase in specificity within occupations explains the decline in the aggregate job separation rate. The main ingredients are endogenous job separations and occupation-specific human capital that workers acquire during employment and lose when they switch occupations. My model has two occupation specificity parameters: (i) the average duration of occupation-specific training and (ii) the output gap by which nontrained workers are less productive because they have not yet acquired the occupation-specific capital. To ask my model how much of a decline it predicts in the aggregate job separation rate when occupations become more specific, the occupation specificity parameters in the model are increased to match the increase in occupation specificity in the data. The increase in the average duration of occupation-specific training matches the required length of occupation-specific training from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and O*NET. The increase in the output gap is informed by the estimated increase in the wage penalty faced by occupation switchers (relative to non-occupation switchers) when their previously held occupation requires more occupation-specific training, obtained from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The model predicts 60% of the decline in the aggregate job separation rate. Chapter 3 relaxes the assumption that occupation switching is exogenous in Chapter 2, endogenizing occupation switching in addition to job separations. The model predicts a greater increase in the average unemployment duration in line with the data. In the model, the longer unemployment spells are due to the unemployed trained workers, whose human capital has become more specific to their previous occupation, choosing not to switch occupations. If they switch occupations, they could quickly end their unemployment spell. This would however come at the cost of larger wage cuts because their human capital has become less transferable to a different occupation. Occupation switchers would also have to earn these lower wages for a longer period of time until they become trained in their new occupation. Hence, despite a low probability of getting reemployed in the same occupation as before, previously trained workers increasingly choose not to switch occupations, which increases the average unemployment duration.

Two theories of work motivation taken from the field of Industrial/Organizational Psychology were compared in a six-week field experiment at a Fortune 500 company. A Job Enrichment Model (Hackman & Oldham, 1975) was used and the Motivating Potential Score (MPS) of three groups of machine operators was obtained before and after a six-week productivity study. Three goal conditions based on Goal Theory (Locke, 1968) were assigned one to each of three groups of machine operators and comparisons were made between the treatment groups. Production increases resulted from providing goals and feedback to subjects, but these increases were not statistically significant. The hourly goal condition with feedback had the largest increase over baseline, greater than either daily goals with feedback or the "do your best" goal condition with no feedback. A weak correlation exists (r =.17) between the change in worker's MPS and the worker's change in production.