|Peter Boettke|
That is Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS. SAS just got named the #1 company to work for by Fortune, and was profiled this morning on CBS Sunday Morning, in a piece that addressed the claim that the rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer during the last 20 years.
My idea of a vibrant intellectual/academic environment fits with the description given of firms such as SAS or Google, and actually what I saw in operation at Stanford and to a considerable extent NYU. An environment where the faculty are constantly fending off offers from competing institutions because their work is widely recognized for its high quality, but who constantly choose to stay because their current environment is one that is intellectually dynamics and provides them with all the financial and non-financial benefits that can be offered anywhere else. In short, they view the entire package of their current work environment too attractive to leave even though an alternative offer might be attractive on a particular margin of salary, prestige, office space, teaching loads, etc.. The signal of turn-over of senior faculty, or the inability to attract first-choice faculty during searches should cause departmental leaders and university administrators to "soul-search" and rethink the intellectual-work environment that is currently in existence and how to improve it because if you are unable to retain and attract those who you have identified as top flight, then it must be more than on one margin that you are falling behind.
My question is if "efficiency wages" increase productivity by both eliminating turn-over and making for a more attractive (for potential employees) and enjoyable (for existing employees) workplace, then why is this often seen as flipping the causal relationship between value and price rather than an interesting way in a dynamic world for employers to capture the opportunity for productivity gains and reward employees accordingly?