Managing People - How Employees' Social Preferences Shape the Returns to Management Practices

Introduction

Many management practices incur important consequences for the distribution of resources as well as for workers' monetary and non-monetary benefits. It is therefore likely that employees' social preferences—like reciprocity and fairness concerns—matter for the effectiveness of management practices and play a major role in the productivity of firms.

Research Objective

I analyze the causal effects of management practices and study to what extent employees' social preferences shape the returns of the considered management practices. In RCTs, I randomize management practices within firms to identify their effects on multiple outcomes, e.g., sales and turnover. I then collect survey data on employees' social preferences and managers' beliefs to study how social preferences shape the returns of the management practices.

Project A: Bakery Chain

In a bakery chain with a control-oriented culture, I reduce for a randomly selected half of the 150 stores documentation duties that workers perceive as a sign of distrust.

Objectives

• Examine the causal impact of employee control on performance.
• Study whether the effects interact with workers' reciprocity.

Project B: Grocery Stores

In a random sample of 234 grocery stores, bonuses are allocated equally among workers. In the remaining stores, managers have full discretion regarding the bonus allocation.

Objectives

• Study whether managers' discretion causally affects performance.
• Examine to what extent the effect is associated with employees' fairness perceptions and managers' beliefs about workers' distributional preferences.

Project C: Kitchen Manufacturer

In a kitchen manufacturer, 301 workers employed in various units whose task it is to identify kitchen planning errors do not interact and share knowledge.

Objectives

• Introduce a new component into the organizational structure: regular meetings in which randomly selected workers from different units discuss planning errors.
• Study the causal impact of the meetings on performance and trust between workers.
• Examine whether the effects depend on workers' reciprocity.