The firm specificity of individual performance: Evidence from cardiac surgery
The firm specificity of individual performance: Evidence from cardiac surgery
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DOI：
10.1287/mnsc.1050.0464
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发表时间：
2006-04-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Pisano, GP
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Huckman, RS;Pisano, GP
在许多情况下，公司依赖独立承包商或自由职业者来提供某些服务。这种关系对公司和工人的好处往往被理解为增加了灵活性。人们对自由职业对个人表现的影响知之甚少。虽然人们通常认为自由职业者的表现在很大程度上是可以在组织中移植的，但如果一个特定的员工随着时间的推移发展了特定于公司的技能和知识，那么他或她的表现也可能在不同的组织中有所不同。我们通过考虑心脏外科医生的表现来经验性地检验这个问题，他们中的许多人在很短的时间内在多家医院进行手术。使用患者死亡率作为结果衡量标准，我们发现某家医院的外科医生的工作质量随着他或她最近在该医院的手术量的增加而显著提高，但不会随着他或她在其他医院的手术量的增加而显著提高。我们的发现表明，外科医生的表现并不完全可以跨医院移植(即，某些部分的表现是公司特有的)。此外，我们提供的初步证据表明，这一结果可能是由外科医生对给定组织的资产的熟悉程度推动的。
In many settings, firms rely on independent contractors, or freelancers, for the provision of certain services. The benefits of such relationships for both firms and workers are often understood in terms of increased flexibility. Less understood is the impact of freelancing on individual performance. While it is often presumed that the performance of freelancers is largely portable across organizations, it is also possible that a given worker's performance may vary across organizations if he or she develops firm-specific skills and knowledge over time. We examine this issue empirically by considering the performance of cardiac surgeons, many of whom perform operations at multiple hospitals within narrow periods of time. Using patient mortality as an outcome measure, we find that the quality of a surgeon's performance at a given hospital improves significantly with increases in his or her recent procedure volume at that hospital but does not significantly improve with increases in his or her volume at other hospitals. Our findings suggest that surgeon performance is not fully portable across hospitals (i.e., some portion of performance is firm specific). Further, we provide preliminary evidence suggesting that this result may be driven by the familiarity that a surgeon develops with the assets of a given organization.