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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Iris Kesternich; Marjolein Van Damme; Han Ye |
| Abstract: | One reason gender pay gaps persist is that women receive more of their total compensation through amenities. Since wages, but not amenities, increase retirement incomes, this may translate into gender pension gaps. Using a discrete choice experiment we investigate whether the valuation for amenities changes when the trade-off with pension income is made salient. We find that women value amenities more than men. Beliefs about the effect of wage changes on pension income do not show large gender differences. However, women change their choices much more strongly than men when reminded about the effects of current choices on pension income. |
| Keywords: | gender, pension gap, amenities, work meaning, workplace flexibility, hypothetical choice experiment, salience, beliefs |
| JEL: | D91 J16 J26 J32 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_600 |
| By: | Jorrit Van Beurden; Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek; Lisanne Bergefurt; Pascale Le Blanc; Mathilda du Preez |
| Abstract: | New experiences with working from home (WfH) during the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a global shift towards hybrid working. This option to incorporate flexibility in when and where to work seems to have become preferred by many employees and employers. Hybrid working can offer benefits such as reduced commuting time and improved work-life balance, however challenges like communication difficulties remain. Also, this shift to remote and hybrid work presents a significant change in employees' work patterns. Understanding the impact of hybrid working choices and both office and home workplace design on employees and organizations is crucial. Concerns include potential declines in organizational outcomes, such as individual and team productivity, workplace cohesion, and organizational identification. This study therefore explores the relationships between individual, job, and workplace characteristics and hybrid working modes with these organizational outcomes. The data for the statistical analyses stem from the employees of two Dutch office-based organisations that participated in the "Work in Transition (WiT)" research project, a collaboration between the Center for People & Buildings, Eindhoven University of Technology, and Delft University of Technology. Through an online survey, 6, 414 office workers of these two (semi-)public organisations answered questions about their job, workplace at home and the office, personal characteristics, hybrid working choices and their perception of the mentioned organizational outcomes. Their answers were analysed with bivariate analyses. In addition, effect sizes were determined to identify the most meaningful relationships.Results show that particularly self-management skills, having shared workplaces at the corporate office, satisfaction with the home office, and workplace autonomy had the largest effects on the organizational outcomes. The findings emphasize the shift in office use towards collaborative tasks in the office and concentrated work at home. Recommendations include restructuring offices and providing support plans for home office setup and self-management skills. |
| Keywords: | Corporate real estate; Hybrid working; organisational outcomes; Self-Management |
| JEL: | R3 |
| Date: | 2024–01–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2024-032 |
| By: | Andrew Caplin; David J. Deming; Shangwen Li; Daniel J. Martin; Philip Marx; Ben Weidmann; Kadachi Jiada Ye |
| Abstract: | We use a controlled experiment to show that ability and belief calibration jointly determine the benefits of working with Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI improves performance more for people with low baseline ability. However, holding ability constant, AI assistance is more valuable for people who are calibrated, meaning they have accurate beliefs about their own ability. People who know they have low ability gain the most from working with AI. In a counterfactual analysis, we show that eliminating miscalibration would cause AI to reduce performance inequality nearly twice as much as it already does. |
| JEL: | D81 J24 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33021 |
| By: | Baader, Malte (Dept. of Finance, University of Zurich); Bowen, Sarah (Verian Group); Hochleitner, Anna (Centre for Applied Research, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Mills, Richard (School of Psychology, University of Nottingham) |
| Abstract: | Even though reporting mistakes could substantially improve work processes and productivity within organisations, employees often hesitate to do so. This paper studies the role of fear (of being fired) and futility (i.e. reports being inconsequential) in explaining such employee silence. Drawing on a principal-agent framework with career concerns, we formalise mistakes as noisy signals of both agent quality and the work environment and show that optimal reporting decisions are affected by fear and futility considerations. We then use a novel experiment to exogenously manipulate the degree of fear and futility and test our theoretical predictions. In a 2x2 between-subject design, we vary the anonymity of reporting and the likelihood of organisational response. Results show that reducing fear and futility are complementary actions. Tackling both significantly increases reporting by about 20pp. This improvement in communication is accompanied by better organisational income, highlighting the value of improved reporting structures for firms and employees. |
| Keywords: | Organisational communication; reporting mistakes |
| JEL: | C92 D23 L21 |
| Date: | 2024–10–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2024_016 |
| By: | Kragl, Jenny; Bental, Benjamin; Safaynikoo, Peymaneh |
| JEL: | D63 D82 M52 M54 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc24:302380 |
| By: | Cong T. Gian; Sumedha Gupta; Kosali I. Simon; Ryan Sullivan; Coady Wing |
| Abstract: | When mortality risks of a job increase, economic theory predicts that wages will rise to compensate workers. COVID-19 became a new source of mortality risk from close contact with other workers and customers. Real wages have risen during the COVID-19 era, but research to date has been sparse on how much of this increase reflects compensating wage differentials for COVID-19 risk on the job. We use 2020- 2021 death certificate data which for the first time includes the decedent’s occupation and industry, together with other occupational and industry mortality for previous years from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) and wage data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine whether compensating wage differentials for COVID-19 occupational risks are in line with prior estimates of Values of Statistical Life (VSL). First, we find that there are substantial differences in the compensating differentials associated with COVID-19 vs other sources of job-related mortality risk. Full time workers’ pay is higher by $24 per week in jobs with a 1 in 1, 000 higher risk of COVID-19 mortality, but their pay is $320 higher in jobs with 1 in 1, 000 higher risk of non-COVID-19 workplace mortality. The non-COVID-19 mortality wage premiums imply that workers trade off money and mortality risk using a VSL of about $18 million, which is near the upper range of the most cited VSL estimates in the literature. In contrast, the COVID-19 wage premium implies that workers make decisions using a VSL of the range $1.24 - $1.54 million, much lower than standard VSL measures. The results are consistent with workers substantially underestimating or undervaluing the risk of COVID-19 mortality. |
| JEL: | I1 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33031 |
| By: | Gibbs, Michael; Mengel, Friederike; Siemroth, Christoph |
| Abstract: | The Covid-19 pandemic forced firms globally to shift workforces to working from home [WFH]. Firms are now struggling to implement a return to working from the office [WFO], as employees enjoy the significant benefits of WFH for their work-life balance. Therefore many firms are adopting a hybrid model in which employees work partly from the office and partly from home. We use unique and detailed data from an Indian IT services firm which contains a precise measure of innovation activity of over 48, 000 employees in these three work environments. Our key outcomes are the quantity and quality of ideas submitted by employees. Based on an event study design, the quantity of ideas did not change during the WFH period as compared to WFO, but the quality of ideas suffered. During the later hybrid period, the quantity of submitted ideas fell. In the hybrid phase innovation suffered particularly in teams which were not well coordinated in terms of when they worked at the office or from home. Our findings suggest that remote and hybrid work modes may inhibit collaboration and innovation. |
| Keywords: | Collaboration; Coordination; Innovation; Working from home; Hybrid work; Telecommuting |
| Date: | 2024–10–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esx:essedp:39434 |
| By: | Fangchen Song; Ashish Agarwal; Wen Wen |
| Abstract: | Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has opened the possibility of automated content production, including coding in software development, which can significantly influence the participation and performance of software developers. To explore this impact, we investigate the role of GitHub Copilot, a generative AI pair programmer, on software development in open-source community, where multiple developers voluntarily collaborate on software projects. Using GitHub's dataset for open-source repositories and a generalized synthetic control method, we find that Copilot significantly enhances project-level productivity by 6.5%. Delving deeper, we dissect the key mechanisms driving this improvement. Our findings reveal a 5.5% increase in individual productivity and a 5.4% increase in participation. However, this is accompanied with a 41.6% increase in integration time, potentially due to higher coordination costs. Interestingly, we also observe the differential effects among developers. We discover that core developers achieve greater project-level productivity gains from using Copilot, benefiting more in terms of individual productivity and participation compared to peripheral developers, plausibly due to their deeper familiarity with software projects. We also find that the increase in project-level productivity is accompanied with no change in code quality. We conclude that AI pair programmers bring benefits to developers to automate and augment their code, but human developers' knowledge of software projects can enhance the benefits. In summary, our research underscores the role of AI pair programmers in impacting project-level productivity within the open-source community and suggests potential implications for the structure of open-source software projects. |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2410.02091 |
| By: | Dae-Hyun Yoo; Caterina Giannetti |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a principal-agent model for aligning artificial intelligence (AI) behaviors with human ethical objectives. In this framework, the end-user acts as the principal, offering a contract to the system developer (the agent) that specifies desired ethical alignment levels for the AI system. This incentivizes the developer to align the AI’s objectives with ethical considerations, fostering trust and collaboration. When ethical alignment is unobservable and the developer is risk-neutral, the optimal contract achieves the same alignment and expected utilities as when it is observable. For observable alignment levels, a fixed reward is uniquely optimal for strictly risk-averse developers, while for risk-neutral developers, a fixed reward is one of several optimal options. Our findings demonstrate that even a basic principal-agent model can enhance the understanding of how to balance responsibility between users and developers in the pursuit of ethical AI. Users seeking higher ethical alignment must compensate developers appropriately, and they also share responsibility for ethical AI by adhering to design specifications and regulations. |
| Keywords: | AI Ethics, Ethical Alignment, Principal-Agent Model, Contract Theory, Responsibility Allocation, Economic Incentives |
| JEL: | D82 D86 O33 |
| Date: | 2024–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pie:dsedps:2024/313 |