Jaime Ortega

Jaime Ortega Diego is a Full Professor of Business Organization at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He has been Director of the Master's and Doctorate in Business Economics and Quantitative Methods and is currently Director of the University's MBA.

Jaime Ortega's research studies the economic costs and benefits of human resource (HR) practices. In a context marked by strong competitive pressure, companies have increasingly introduced HR practices that seek to improve the individual performance of employees and economic results at the company level. In this task, they come across numerous questions about how to reward their employees, how to organize work, and how reward policies should be combined with work design decisions. The answers are not easy since economic incentives can be very powerful but can also generate great distortions. Therefore, to choose between different alternative HR practices, it is necessary to understand the economic dilemmas that are at stake, rigorously identifying the costs and benefits of the practices. Recent developments in the availability of large databases (“big data”) make these questions even more relevant and at the same time provide new opportunities to try to answer them.

Professor Ortega has published in international journals such as Management Science, The Accounting Review, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, and Industrial Relations, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Participation and Employee Ownership.

Eriksson, Tor, and Jaime Ortega. “Organizational Structure and High-Performance Work Practices”, Industrial and Corporate Change, in press.

Awaysheh, Amrou, Rocío Bonet, and Jaime Ortega, 2023. “Performance Feedback and Productivity: Evidence from a Field Experiment”, Production and Operations Management, vol. 32 (1): 98-115.

Bonet, Rocío, Tor Eriksson, and Jaime Ortega, 2019. “Up for Review: Unravelling the Link between Formal Evaluations and Performance-Based Rewards”, Industrial Relations vol. 58 (1): 108-137.

De Motta, Adolfo and Jaime Ortega, 2013. “Incentives, Capital Budgeting, and Organizational Structure”, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy vol. 22 (4): 810-831.

Ortega, Jaime, 2009. “Employee Discretion and Performance Pay”, The Accounting Review, vol. 84 (2): 589-612.

Ortega, Jaime, 2009. "Why do Employers give Discretion? Family versus Performance Concerns ", Industrial Relations vol. 48 (1): 1-26.

Eriksson, Tor and Jaime Ortega, 2006. “The Adoption of Job Rotation: Testing the Theories”, Industrial and Labor Relations Review vol. 59 (4): 653-666.

Ortega, Jaime, 2003. “Power in the Firm and Managerial Career Concerns”, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy vol 12 (1): 1-29.

Ortega, Jaime, 2001. “Job Rotation as a Learning Mechanism”, Management Science, vol. 47 (10): 1361-1370.