Rent Seeking and the Transformation of Employment Relationships
研究公司重组是否使雇佣关系更市场化，通过分析一家财富500强能源企业25年人事记录，发现重组后雇佣关系更依赖市场，且生产工人比管理者更明显。
A key debate in research on corporate restructuring is whether this widespread and extensive transformation process made contemporary employment relationships more open—with firms relying largely on market forces to reward employees—or left them relatively closed, with wages remaining primarily a function of internal labor market systems, practices, and policies. Research in this arena has had conceptual and empirical challenges in clearly distinguishing between these contrasting perspectives, leaving open the question of whether corporate restructuring reflects a full-fledged transformation in wage patterns, determinants, and outcomes, or instead erosion around the margins. We seek to resolve this debate by extending, refining, and assessing a rent-destruction account of the effect of corporate restructuring on employment relationships—which we contrast with internal labor market approaches. Results from analyses of 25 years of personnel records from a Fortune 500 energy-sector firm are consistent with the rent-destruction account: employment relationships became more market-based following the onset of corporate restructuring—albeit with production workers’ contracts seemingly becoming more open than those of managers.