Die betriebswirtschaftliche Logik von Outplacement-Leistungen. Theoretische Erklärungsansätze und ihre Plausibilität im Lichte vorliegender empirischer Befunde

Abstract

In times of increasing employment uncertainty, the question of employability gains more and more importance. Among the many measures to enhance employee employability the provision of outplacement benefits play a prominent role. This paper takes a first step in systematically exploring the economic rationale of outplacement benefits by considering a number of theoretical approaches that may help to explain the provision of outplacement benefits: An accounting logic, a productivity oriented logic, and a signalling logic are elaborated. As systematic data on the provision of outplacement benefits are lacking, the paper confronts the implications from theory with the anecdotal evidence at hand concluding that there seems to be more than one single rationale for the provision of outplacement benefits. The paper closes with a plea for a theoretically inspired systematic empirical analysis of the provision of outplacement benefits.