Arbeitspapier

Measuring indirect effects of unfair employer behavior on worker productivity: A field experiment

We present a field experiment in which we set up a call-center to study how the productivity of workers is affected if managers treat their co-workers in an unfair way. This question cannot be studied in long-lived organizations since workers may change their career expectations (and hence effort) when managers behave unfairly towards co-workers. In order to rule out such confounds and to measure productivity changes of unaffected workers in a clean way, we create an environment where employees work for two shifts. In one treatment, we lay off parts of the workforce before the second shift. Compared to two different control treatments, we find that, in the layoff treatment, the productivity of the remaining, unaffected workers drops by 12 percent. We show that this result is not driven by peer effects or altered beliefs about the job or the managers' competence, but rather related to the workers' perception of unfair behavior of employers towards co-workers. The latter interpretation is confirmed in a survey among professional HR managers. We also show that the effect of unfair behavior on the productivity of unaffected workers is close to the upper bound of the direct effects of wage cuts on the productivity of affected workers. This suggests that the price of an employer's unfair behavior goes well beyond the potential tit-for-tat of directly affected workers.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: Preprints of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods ; No. 2017/22

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Field Experiments
Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining: General
Labor Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
Thema
Gift exchange
Layoffs
Labor Markets
Fairness
Field Experiment

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Heinz, Matthias
Jeworrek, Sabrina
Mertins, Vanessa
Schumacher, Heiner
Sutter, Matthias
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
(wo)
Bonn
(wann)
2017

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Heinz, Matthias
  • Jeworrek, Sabrina
  • Mertins, Vanessa
  • Schumacher, Heiner
  • Sutter, Matthias
  • Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Entstanden

  • 2017

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