External Recruitment as an Incentive Device
从激励角度论证外部招聘的积极作用：当晋升基于相对绩效时，员工可能采取破坏性竞争，而外部招聘能降低破坏活动的边际收益，激励生产性努力，提升企业绩效。
External recruitment has often been viewed as a necessary evil in that it trades off the need for outside talents with the incentives of inside workers. This paper, however, shows that even from an incentive viewpoint, external recruitment has its positive role to play. Specifically, if promotion is based on relative performance, then negative activities in the form of sabotage are a valuable instrument to com-pete. This results in inefficiency of the workers ’ efforts and performance of the firm. External recruitment, by reducing the marginal return of negative activity relative to that of productive activity, can restore the incentives of the workers to engage in productive activity and enhances the firm’s performance. We also show that even when negative activities are not a concern, external recruitment can sometimes avoid the shirking equilibrium, or prevents collusion of the workers. ∗I thank Ji-Shyan Wang for initial collaboration, and participants of the 2002 Annual Congress of European Economic Association in Venice for comments. Financial support from Hong Kong University