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Effects of Training on Employee Suggestions and Promotions: Evidence from Personnel Records

  • Employee Suggestions and Promotions
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Schmalenbach Business Review Aims and scope

Abstract

We evaluate the effects of employer-provided formal training on employee suggestions for productivity improvements and on promotions among male blue-collar workers. Using more than 20 years of personnel data of four entry cohorts in a German company, we address issues such as unobserved heterogeneity and the length of potential training effects. Our main finding is that workers are more likely to make suggestions and to be promoted after they have received formal training. However, the effect on suggestions is only short term. Promotion probabilities are greatest directly after training, but also seem to be affected in the long term.

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Correspondence to Pfeifer Christian.

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Acknowledgements: This work was supported financially by the VolkswagenStiftung. We thank two referees of this journal and seminar participants at Leuphana University Lüneburg, University Paderborn, the 14th Colloquium in Personnel Economics 2011 in Zurich, and EALE conference 2011 in Cyprus for their comments.

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Christian, P., Janssen, S., Yang, P. et al. Effects of Training on Employee Suggestions and Promotions: Evidence from Personnel Records. Schmalenbach Bus Rev 65, 270–287 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396858

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