Task assignments and incentives: generalists versus specialists

I develop an agency model of job assignments where jobs differ based on the breadth of tasks. A tradeoff between task complementarities and relative abilities of workers results in those with balanced skills being assigned to multitask jobs. The same tradeoff between complementarities and relative abilities also influences incentives to sort privately informed workers to jobs. I then draw on a variety of sources (survey data, case studies, and anecdotal evidence) to suggest that relative abilities and multitasking play an important role in managerial assignments of nonacademic research scientists. Copyright (c) 2009, RAND.