COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 217.1

COURSE TITLE: Incentives and Strategies in Talent Management

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 units

INSTRUCTOR: Yona Rubinstein

E-MAIL ADDRESS: yona_rubinstein@haas.berkeley.edu

MEETING DATES: 8/22-10/24 (No class 9/5 for Labor Day)

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION: bCourses

PREREQUISITE(S): Enquiring minds.

CLASS FORMAT: This course relies on both lectures and discussion of state of the art research papers in a non-technical style.

REQUIRED READINGS: Lecture notes and further readings will be provided online.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: 
Class discussion 20%
Home reading assignment 30%
Final take home exam 50%

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
View complete slide deck of course content and objectives here.

Incentives and Strategies in Talent Management provides an economic framework for analyzing the management of talent.

We use this framework to examine the attraction, motivation, and retention of talent under varying institutional and competitive environments, highlighting the importance of information and incentive in the modern economy.

Last but not least we provide evidence for the effectiveness of alterative management strategies -- with special focus on monetary and social incentives -- on the performance of individuals and the productivity of teams.

• In addressing these question and others we ignore neither that:
• Managers (owners) and employees seek to maximize their well-being nor that
• Both are humans and as such they are subject to cognitive and non-cognitive constraints.
• Furthermore, we recognize that:
• Managers and employees, individuals and teams do not share the same goals, and that:
• Information is not perfect and not-symmetrically shared.

Topics

• Individual and group biases in managerial decisions.
• Recruitment, hiring, and retention of employees.
• Investment in human-capital.
• Training and career development.
• Motivating workers.
• Compensation and fringe benefits.
• Firing, downsizing and job security.
• Organizational structure of work and workplace.
• Performance and executive compensation.
• Entrepreneurship.

Lecture Outline
Lecture 1: Human Managers
Lecture 2: Recruiting and Sorting
Lecture 3: Private Signals and Group Affiliations in the Recruitment Process
Lecture 4: Investing in Human Capital
Lecture 5: General vs. Specific Human Capital
Lecture 6: Pay Incentives and Effort
Lecture 7 Strategic Interactions and the Management of Talent in Teams
Lecture 8: Turnovers, Layoffs, and Buyouts
Lecture 9: Entrepreneurship

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Professor at the London School of Economics. My research is closely related to the topics covered in this course. This includes my recent work (with Ross Levine) on entrepreneurship, see below:
Troubled Teens Make More Successful Entrepreneurs
Troubled teenagers equal entrepreneurial success
Behaviour - Entrepreneurs don't play by the school rules