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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Nava Ashraf; Oriana Bandiera; Virginia Minni; Luigi Zingales |
| Abstract: | We evaluate a firm's unusual, worker-centered, solution to the agency problem: enabling employees to reduce the cost of effort rather than pushing them with performance rewards. We randomize the roll-out of the firm's "Discover Your Purpose" intervention among 2, 976 white-collar employees and evaluate their outcomes over two years. We find that performance increases because the low performers either leave the firm or improve in their current jobs. The trade-off between meaning and pay flattens as those with low meaning and high pay leave the firm. Treatment also reshapes stated priorities and reduces gender gaps in preferences and behaviors, including uptake of parental leave. A cost-benefit analysis reveals high returns that are shared between the firm and the employees through higher bonuses. Finally, we show that observational data obscure these gains, causing firms to underestimate the intervention's true value. |
| Keywords: | incentives, worker motivation, worker performance, meaning-making |
| Date: | 2025–05–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2104 |
| By: | Raffaella Sadun; Rachel J. Schuh; Jonathan S. Hartley; John Van Reenen; Nicholas Bloom |
| Abstract: | We show better-managed firms are more dynamic in plant acquisitions, disposals, openings and closings in U.S. Census and international data. Better-managed firms also birth better-managed plants and improve the performance of the plants they acquire. To explain these findings we build a model with two key elements. First, management is a combination of firm-level management ability (e.g. CEO quality), which can be transferred to all plants, and plant-level management practices, which can be changed through intangible investment (e.g. consulting or training). Second, management both raises productivity and also reduces the operational costs of dynamism: buying, selling, opening and closing plants. We structurally estimate the model on Census microdata, fitting our key dynamic moments, and then use it to establish three additional results. First, mergers and acquisitions raise economy-wide management and productivity by reallocating plants to firms with higher management ability. Banning M&A would depress GDP and management by about 15%. Second, greater product market competition improves both management and productivity by reallocating away from badly managed plants. Finally, management practices account for about 20% of the cross-country productivity differences with the US. |
| JEL: | J0 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33765 |
| By: | Matteo Broso; Andrea Gallice; Caterina Muratori |
| Abstract: | Men and women often sort into different jobs, and male-dominated jobs typically pay more than female-dominated ones. Why is that the case? We propose a model where workers have heterogeneous attitudes with respect to the social norms that define gender prescribed occupations and face endogenous social costs when entering jobs deemed "appropriate" for the other gender. We show that: (i) workers trade off identity and wage considerations in deciding where to work; (ii) asymmetric social norms contribute to the gender pay gap by deterring women from entering higher-paying male-dominated sectors; (iii) breaking social norms generates positive externalities, reducing social stigma for everyone. Therefore, in equilibrium, there are too few social norm breakers. |
| Keywords: | Occupational Segregation; Wage Gap; Social Norms. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:728 |
| By: | Haeckl, Simone (University of Stavanger); Onozaka, Yuko (University of Stavanger) |
| Abstract: | This study examines gender differences in leadership behavior and effectiveness using a framed field experiment conducted in a large company. Leaders and followers in randomly assigned teams interacted in recorded online team meetings to discuss topics of strategic importance. Their behaviors were assessed through research assistant ratings and natural language processing, and effectiveness via external evaluations and follower surveys. We find that female leaders exhibited significantly more communal behaviors through elaboration on team members' ideas, frequent discussion contributions, and affirmative language than male leaders. However, these differences did not translate into superior team performance; male and female leaders showed com- parable effectiveness, particularly in external evaluations. Follower evaluations were more responsive to leader gender, with evidence of a communality bonus whereby male leaders received disproportionately positive evaluations for communal behaviors. Higher-level leaders achieved better team performance, regardless of gender. These findings suggest that leadership effectiveness is more strongly associated with developed expertise than with gender per se. Organizations may thus benefit from broadly developing leadership capabilities, alongside implementing evaluation systems that mitigate gender biases. |
| Keywords: | leadership; behavior; gender; RC |
| JEL: | C93 J16 J24 J28 |
| Date: | 2025–06–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:stavef:2025_001 |
| By: | Alan Kwan; Ben Matthies; Richard R. Townsend; Ting Xu |
| Abstract: | Using a novel firm-level remote work measure created from big data on Internet activity, we show that firms with higher remote work during the pandemic are more likely to see their employees becoming entrepreneurs. This effect holds both unconditionally and relative to other types of job turnovers. We establish causality using instrumental variables and a panel event study. The marginally created businesses are higher quality than the average new firm. The effect is not driven by employee selection, preference change, or forced turnover. Rather, remote work increases spawning by providing the time and downside protection needed for entrepreneurial experimentation. |
| JEL: | E32 J22 J24 L26 M13 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33774 |
| By: | Massimo Anelli; Felix Koenig |
| Abstract: | We develop a revealed preference approach to measure the value of workplace amenities by analyzing how variation in non-wage job attributes affects excess mass in the earnings distribution at budget discontinuities. The approach formalizes the idea that workers are less responsive to monetary incentives when amenities constitute a larger share of total compensation. Applying this method to workplace safety during COVID-19 waves, we find that workers are willing to sacrifice 9% of their earnings to reduce weekly fatality risks by one in 100, 000. The findings suggest that conventional hedonic regressions substantially under-estimate the value of workplace safety. |
| Keywords: | non-wage amenities, labor supply, bunching, workplace safety, value of life, job satisfaction |
| Date: | 2025–05–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2100 |
| By: | Eleanor W. Dillon; Sonia Jaffe; Nicole Immorlica; Christopher T. Stanton |
| Abstract: | We present evidence on how generative AI changes the work patterns of knowledge workers using data from a 6-month-long, cross-industry, randomized field experiment. Half of the 7, 137 workers in the study received access to a generative AI tool integrated into the applications they already used for emails, document creation, and meetings. We find that access to the AI tool during the first year of its release primarily impacted behaviors that workers could change independently and not behaviors that require coordination to change: workers who used the tool in more than half of the sample weeks spent 3.6 fewer hours, or 31% less time on email each week (intent to treat estimate is 1.3 hours) and completed documents moderately faster, but did not significantly change time spent in meetings. |
| JEL: | L23 M1 M15 M5 O33 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33795 |