General Human Capital Transfer and Relational Strength in Alternative Work Arrangements
Abstract: In the “future of work”, traditional employment may be substituted by alternative, and short-term, work arrangements. This trend may preclude a firm’s ability to capture value from human capital investments. In this paper, we explore whether a “relational” role of general human capital transfer may alleviate such challenge. We argue that transferring general human capital creates relational capital between firm and worker. This transfer may align supply and demand-side incentives to transfer human capital. Using highly-detailed datasets from a large direct sales company, we find that firm-sponsored general training increases performance and duration of an alternative work arrangement. Further, results from a small-scale field experiment suggest that a relational framing outperforms firm-specific or general framings in terms of incentivizing demand and supply of human capital.
