CSUEB professor publishes new theoretical model for job design and compensation

• March 22, 2010 12:00am

Jed DeVaro, associate professor of management and economics, published a new article in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. He proposes a new theoretical model that integrates relational job design and compensation. In his model, employers choose both a level of compensation and levels of relational job architecture with an eye toward maximizing profit. Higher levels of compensation increase the average productivity of new hires, whereas higher levels of relational job architecture motivate existing employees to work harder.

DeVaro writes that several key predictions emerge from the theory:

1. higher levels of relational architecture, and sometimes higher levels of compensation, yield greater worker effort,
2. the response of worker effort to an increase in the degree to which the worker values monetary compensation has an inverted-U shape, and
3. increases in the price of the firm's service or product yield increases in compensation, and also changes in the provision of relational architecture that depend on the way in which both components of relational architecture affect the worker's cost of exerting effort.

CSUEB faculty, staff and students may access the full online article through the library.