Hierarchical Organizational Design: A Contest Design Perspective
Xiruo Wang;Anran Tan;Tao Hu;Zenan Wu;
Abstract:
This paper presents a dynamic two-stage tournament model that incorporates heterogeneous contestants and a hierarchical career ladder with accelerated promotion. The firm can use accelerated promotion—which enables fast-tracked employees to enter into the finale with certainty—to motivate employees' effort incentives. Our study explores the optimal job ladder design and hierarchical organizational structure for accelerated promotion. The results indicate that the optimal policy depends on the organization's objective and the distribution of employees' abilities. When organizations aim to maximize the aggregate effort from all employees, an accelerated promotion mechanism is less likely to be adopted when employees' abilities are on par. However, when there is a substantial disparity in employees' ability, organizations should prioritize promotion of lower-ability individuals to foster competition—which echoes the traditional wisdom of “leveling the playing field” in the contest literature. When organizations aim to maximize selection efficiency—i.e., to select employees with higher innate abilities—we show that promoting high-ability employees should be prioritized in order to reduce uncertainty throughout the selection process. Our findings generate practical and policy implications for organization design and provide novel insights into organization's optimal promotion policies. Our results shed light on the importance of manipulating the competitive balance among employees in the promotion process, especially in situations where there is a significant variance in employees' abilities. Our paper contributes to the literature on organizational design and human resource management, offering guidance for designing effective promotion policies that align with organizational objectives and foster a fair and competitive environment.
Key Words:
Foundation: 国家自然科学基金优秀青年科学基金项目“竞赛理论”(72222002);国家自然科学基金面上基金项目“参赛者异质性与竞赛设计”(72173002);国家自然科学基金青年项目“高管团队地位不平等影响效果研究”(72002009)的资助
Authors: Xiruo Wang;Anran Tan;Tao Hu;Zenan Wu;
References:
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- (1)概念上,破格提拔一般指对能力突出的优秀成员突破任职资格规定进行越级提拔。现实中存在通过政策倾斜赋予相对弱势的群体或个体晋级优势的场景(如对少数民族考生高考加分的政策)。本文重点研究组织赋予特定成员优先晋升机会的条件,以及哪类成员应获得相应优势。 (2)关于竞赛理论进展的中文总结综述详见陈志俊和张昕竹(2004)、王哲伟(2012)。 (3)具体而言,εi的累积分布函数为■。这一分布在计量经济学离散选择模型(McFadden,1974a,b)与竞赛理论(Clark and Riis,1996;Jia,2008)中被广泛采用。关于这一随机分布的微观基础见第三部分脚注。 (4)除(1)中提供的微观基础外,在研发竞赛中亦可推导出相同的获胜概率函数(Loury,1979;Dasgupta and Stiglitz,1980;Fullerton and McAfee,1999;Baye and Hoppe,2003)。具体而言,考虑一场包含n≥2名参赛者的研发竞赛。每名参赛者最终向竞赛组织方提交一份作品(或研发方案),作品质量最高者胜出。期间,每名参赛者可进行多次尝试,形成多份作品,提交其中质量最高者。每次尝试将生成一份作品,其质量ω服从连续累积分布函数Γ(ω)。记参赛者i尝试的次数为ei≥0,其中i∈{1,…,n}。可以证明,对于任意给定的质量分布函数Γ(ω),参赛者i的获胜概率为■。 (5)换言之,不失一般性,此部分分析中可以将c3标准化成1。 (6)因为分析上的困难,静态多赢家套嵌Tullock竞赛博弈均衡的存在性和唯一性一直缺少严格证明和深入讨论;相关分析近期由Fu et al.(2022,2023)给出。 (7)注意到图 4左下方存在一个阶梯晋升竞赛总努力水平高于优先晋升竞赛的区域。此区域中,能力最低者与其余两名员工能力相差较为悬殊;与此同时,能力最高者与能力居中者能力的差距既不会太大,也不会太小。直觉如下:根据(12)式,阶梯晋升竞赛中,每名员工付出努力时关注其余两名员工的努力之和。当员工的能力分布位于图 4左下方区域时,使用阶梯晋升竞赛将使能力居中者和能力最低者共同对能力最高者构成威胁,实现一种平衡,从而激发能力最高者的工作热情。这种平衡会在能力最高者与能力居中者的能力差距过大或者过小时失去。前一种情形下,若使用阶梯晋升竞赛,能力较弱的两名员工不足以对能力者最高者形成威胁;此时更有效的方法是通过优先晋升能力居中者来对能力最高者施压。后一种情形下,能力最高者与能力居中者能力十分接近,本身已经构成平衡的竞争态势,若使用阶梯晋升竞赛,能力最低者的加入将打破这种平衡;此时可以通过优先晋升能力最低者来维持能力较强两名员工之间的平衡。 (8)Brown(2011)考虑三人静态博弈中超级明星的存在对于参赛者激励的影响。Brown(2011)的模型中只有高能力与低能力两类参赛者。与Brown(2011)不同,本文考虑动态博弈。此外,本文允许三名参赛者能力各不相同。
- Xiruo Wang
- Anran Tan
- Tao Hu
- Zenan Wu
- School of Economics and Management
- Beijing Jiaotong University
- Department of Economics
- Duke University
- School of Economics
- Peking University
- Sustainability Research Institute
- Peking University
- Xiruo Wang
- Anran Tan
- Tao Hu
- Zenan Wu
- School of Economics and Management
- Beijing Jiaotong University
- Department of Economics
- Duke University
- School of Economics
- Peking University
- Sustainability Research Institute
- Peking University