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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Antonio Cabrales; Esther Hauk |
| Abstract: | Many workers value purpose and meaning in their jobs alongside income, and firms need to align these preferences with profit goals. This paper develops a dynamic model in which firms invest in ”purpose” to enhance job meaning and motivate effort. Workers, who differ in productivity, choose both productive and socialization effort, gaining utility from income and meaning. Purpose accumulates over time through firm investment and interacts with socialization to generate meaning, which boosts productivity. Firms invest in purpose only insofar as it raises profits. We characterize the unique equilibrium, including steady state and transition dynamics. Meaning and purpose rise with the importance workers place on meaning and with firm’s patience, but fall with depreciation and socialization costs. The relationship with workers’ share of output is nonmonotonic. We also show that some intermediate level of heterogeneity in skills is best for performance. Compared to a worker-owned firm, profit-maximizing firms underinvest in purpose, highlighting a misalignment between firm incentives and worker preferences. The model provides insight into when and why firms adopt purpose-driven practices and underscores the role of diversity in fostering meaning at work. |
| Keywords: | meaning at work, personnel motivation, diversity in work, investment in purpose |
| JEL: | M50 M52 L23 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12381 |
| By: | Christos A. Makridis |
| Abstract: | Using longitudinal data from the Gallup Panel covering more than 30, 000 U.S. employees surveyed from 2023 to 2025, I document heterogeneous adoption of generative AI and its "organizational transmission" within firms. First, I show that the share of active (occasional) AI users grew from 9% to 24% (10% to 23%). I subsequently document these patterns by organizational class of work, organizational hierarchy, income, industry, and occupation. Second, I show that perceived strategic clarity is the dominant correlate of frequent adoption: employees in clear-strategy organizations are roughly 26 percentage points more likely to report frequent use. Strategic clarity itself is tightly linked to managerial communication and credibility, including meaningful feedback and trust in leadership. Third, exploiting within-person variation, income-by-time controls, and a job-switcher design, I show that the relationship between AI use and worker outcomes is strongly contingent on organizational context. Frequent AI use is associated with substantially higher engagement and job satisfaction and with markedly lower burnout when organizations communicate a clear AI strategy, while these benefits are muted or reversed in low-clarity environments. These results are consistent with the predictions from a stylized theoretical model whereby workers are more likely to adopt and experiment with AI when they experience psychological safety. |
| Keywords: | generative AI, technology adoption, managers, trust, communication, organizational complementarities, panel data |
| JEL: | O33 M15 M54 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12373 |
| By: | Negar Khaliliaraghi; Petter Lundborg; Johan Vikström |
| Abstract: | Gender gaps in earnings persist even among high-skilled workers, partly because men and women often perform different tasks within and across jobs. We study a rare setting in which high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions, allowing us to assess gender differences in productivity and pay without confounding from task or client allocation. Using administrative data from the Swedish Public Employment Service between 2003 and 2014, we exploit a rotation scheme that quasi-randomly assigns job seekers to employment caseworkers. This ensures male and female caseworkers are matched with comparable clients. We find productivity differences are small: job seekers assigned to female and male caseworkers exit unemployment at similar rates, with no evidence of job-quality differences. Consistent with this, hourly wages—conditional on productivity—are nearly identical across genders. Despite this, female caseworkers earn about 8 percent less per year, due to differences in contracted and actual hours worked. We also find suggestive evidence that male caseworkers are more likely to be promoted than equally productive female colleagues. Overall, when tasks are standardized and performance is measured objectively, gender differences in productivity and hourly pay are minimal, while gaps in annual earnings and career progression persist. |
| Keywords: | gender gaps, productivity, wages, task allocation |
| JEL: | D84 I12 J12 J21 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12413 |
| By: | Garance Genicot; Zahra Mansoor; Ghazala Mansuri |
| Abstract: | Frontline workers in public bureaucracies perform multidimensional tasks and rely on supervisors who both monitor performance and supply essential managerial inputs. We study how incentive design should account for these interactions using a conceptual framework and a province-wide randomized experiment with the Punjab Agriculture Extension Department in Pakistan. Across 131 tehsils, we compare: (i) an Objective pay-for-performance scheme tied to digital activity metrics; (ii) a Subjective scheme in which supervisors allocate bonuses; and (iii) a Subjective Plus scheme that preserves discretion but introduces light-touch oversight of supervisors. All three schemes increase outreach, but through distinct channels. Objective incentives primarily raise intensive effort—repeat visits to the same farmers—while Subjective Plus expands the extensive margin by inducing supervisors to schedule more farmer trainings and broaden geographic coverage. Contrary to standard multitasking concerns, meeting length—a proxy for engagement quality—increases across all arms. Oversight of supervisors also reduces favoritism in bonus allocation and improves merit-based evaluation, leading to greater access and yield gains among marginalized farmers. The results show that light-touch monitoring of middle management can substantially amplify the effectiveness and equity of performance pay in multi-layered bureaucracies. |
| JEL: | D23 O12 Q16 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34825 |
| By: | Stefan Leknes (Statistics Norway); Hildegunn E. Stokke (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology); Eric Myran Wee (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology) |
| Abstract: | Superior employment matching is considered a key source of agglomeration economies, yet little is known about how urban scale affects matching over workers’ careers. Using full-count Norwegian registry data from 1995-2019, we estimate two-way worker and plant fixed effects to construct a worker-level measure of assortative matching. We find that job matches are more assortative in cities and that city workers progress more rapidly toward increasingly better matches over the career. These gains are concentrated among high-ability workers, while low-ability workers become increasingly mismatched in cities. For migrants, assortative matching initially declines following relocation but improves with subsequent job transitions. |
| Keywords: | Assortative matching, agglomeration economies, career progression, wage decomposition, skills, mobility, AKM-estimation |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–02–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nst:samfok:20626 |
| By: | Yana Rodgers; Lisa Schur; Flora Hammond; Renee Edwards; Jennifer Cohen; Douglas Kruse |
| Abstract: | Background: Many workers with disabilities face negative stereotypical attitudes, pay gaps, and a lack of respect in the workplace, contributing to substantially lower job satisfaction compared to people without disabilities. Work from home may help to increase job satisfaction for people with disabilities. Objective: This study analyzes how different measures of job satisfaction vary between people with and without disabilities, and the extent to which working from home moderates the relationship between disability and job satisfaction. Methods: We use multivariable regression analysis to examine if the ability to work from home moderates the relationship between disability and indicators related to job satisfaction. The dataset draws on a novel survey of healthcare professionals. Results: Results show that people with disabilities have relatively greater turnover intentions, lower sense of organizational commitment and support, weaker perceptions of openness and inclusion in the workplace, and worse relations with management and coworkers. Regressions indicate that working from home helps to improve most perceptions of work experiences but does so more for people without disabilities than for people with disabilities. Conclusions: The findings suggest that (a) some accommodations typically viewed as exceptions to meet the needs of people with disabilities have even greater benefits for the workforce at large and (b) because workers with and without disabilities benefit from remote work, we cannot expect those accommodations to close the gaps caused by inequities. |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2602.17790 |
| By: | Edward Freeland; Andrew Garin; Dmitri K. Koustas |
| Abstract: | We examine how workers perceive the trade-offs of freelancing using a novel survey design that explores the nature of workers' perceptions of their own jobs and the implications of work arrangements for their take-home pay. We find that, across several alternative classifications of freelance work, workers in such arrangements make less per hour than traditional employees, but report having greater control of when, where, and how they work. We find that on average, self-employed workers spend an additional 5 to 8 percentage points of gross pay covering unreimbursed expenses relative to traditional employees. However, when asked about expectations of net pay in freelance and traditional employment jobs with the same gross pay, respondents who received no quantitative information expected net pay to be higher in freelance arrangements than in employment arrangements, on average. This pattern reversed among respondents who were randomly assigned to receive customized estimates of their expected total expense and tax burdens in each arrangement, who estimated that freelance arrangements would generate lower net lower earnings than employment arrangements (consistent with the estimates we provided to them). This suggests that workers may not be fully aware of the tax and expense burdens freelance workers are responsible for. Interestingly, we find similar results both for workers who are currently employees in their main job and those who are currently self-employed, suggesting that the low salience of the tax and expense burdens associated with freelance work are not merely driven by those with no self-employment experience. |
| JEL: | H22 J33 J46 J48 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34843 |
| By: | Cevat Giray Aksoy; Jose Maria Barrero; Nicholas Bloom; Katelyn Cranney; Steven J. Davis; Mathias Dolls; Pablo Zarate; E. Philip Davis |
| Abstract: | We establish three facts about work from home (WFH) in the United States. First, employees WFH more often at younger firms – almost twice as often at firms founded after 2015 than at firms founded before 1990. Second, employees working under younger CEOs have higher levels of WFH. The average WFH rate is 1.4 days per week when the CEO is under 30, compared to 1.1 days when the CEO is 60 or older. Third, the self-employed WFH more than twice as often as wage-and-salary employees. These facts highlight the importance of organizational and managerial attributes for the prevalence of WFH. |
| Keywords: | remote work, working arrangements |
| JEL: | J01 J53 J81 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12439 |
| By: | Grace E. Steward; Mario Macis; Nicola Lacetera; Jeffrey P. Kahn; Vikram S. Chib |
| Abstract: | We conducted a within-subject laboratory experiment in which participants decided whether to experience physical discomfort for charity, with or without additional personal compensation. Acceptance decreased with greater discomfort and increased with both larger charitable donations and personal payments. We show that private monetary incentives and prosocial benefits interact in a less-than-additive way: personal compensation raises participation but attenuates the marginal impact of charitable donations, making the combined impact of private and social rewards smaller than the sum of their separate effects. We also find suggestive evidence that the sequencing of compensated and uncompensated choices may change the responsiveness to charitable benefits. Overall, our results indicate that context, especially the presence (and timing) of private rewards, can affect the relationship between incentives and prosocial behavior. |
| Keywords: | prosocial behavior, incentives, altruism, motivation, decision-making |
| JEL: | C91 D64 D91 M52 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12433 |
| By: | Rachel Schuh |
| Abstract: | Why do workers still segregate by sex across occupations, industries, and firms? Recent research has focused on how preferences for job amenities, like flexibility, may differ by sex. However, one “amenity” that has received relatively little attention is the sex composition of a job itself. In a recent paper, I conducted a survey experiment to estimate men’s and women’s preferences for sex composition in the workplace. One result is that women and young single men prefer jobs with at least half female coworkers. |
| Keywords: | workplace preferences; workplace composition; female; Male; labor |
| JEL: | J2 J7 |
| Date: | 2026–02–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednls:102483 |