Organized
Shady characters: The implications of illicit organizational roles for resilient team performance
Colleen Stuart & Celia Moore
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper we theorize about illicit roles and explore their effects on resilient team performance. We define an illicit role as one whose occupants specialize in activity forbidden by the law, regulatory bodies, or professional societies, in the belief that doing so provides a competitive advantage. Using longitudinal data on professional hockey teams, we examine the enforcer - a player who specializes in the prohibited activity of fighting. We find that team performance is more disrupted by the injury of an enforcer than by the injury of occupants of other formal roles on the team. In addition, team performance recovers more slowly after this setback to the extent the team tries to replace an enforcer, and the performance disruptions associated with his exit are magnified as a function of his experience with his team. We use these findings to develop new theory about organizational roles that operate outside official channels and formal structures. We suggest that such role occupants are more difficult to replace than their formal counterparts, in part because to enact these roles effectively requires experience in the local social context.
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Share Capitalism and Worker Wellbeing
Alex Bryson et al.
Labour Economics, October 2016, Pages 151-158
Abstract:
We show that worker wellbeing is determined not only by the amount of compensation workers receive but also by how compensation is determined. While previous theoretical and empirical work has often been preoccupied with individual performance-related pay, we find that the receipt of a range of group-performance schemes (profit shares, group bonuses and share ownership) is associated with higher job satisfaction. This holds conditional on wage levels, so that pay methods are associated with greater job satisfaction in addition to that coming from higher wages. We use a variety of methods to control for unobserved individual and job-specific characteristics. We suggest that half of the share-capitalism effect is accounted for by employees reciprocating for the "gift"; we also show that share capitalism helps dampen the negative wellbeing effects of what we typically think of as "bad" aspects of job quality.
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Steven Kahl, Brayden King & Greg Liegel
Organization Science, September-October 2016, Pages 1084-1107
Abstract:
This paper examines how occupational groups survive the introduction of a new technology and associated jurisdictional changes. We draw on a comparative historical analysis of two occupational associations' - systems men and production planners - efforts to frame their evolving tasks and relate to other occupations after the introduction of the computer into U.S. business in the early 1950s. We observe that systems men followed the path traditionally advocated in the occupations and professions literature by seeking autonomy through differentiating their task domains from other groups and by trying to get other groups to recognize their control. But they were unsuccessful and disbanded by the mid-1990s. In contrast, the successful production planners took an integrative approach through efforts to frame the interdependencies of their tasks and relate to other occupations, making them more necessary to the functioning of other groups and the organization. Our study contributes to the growing relational perspective on occupations by showing how taking an integrative approach with other occupations at the field level can help occupations survive long term.
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Policy Changes in Major League Baseball: Improved Agent Behavior and Ancillary Productivity Outcomes
Brian Mills
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Offense in Major League Baseball (MLB) has decreased substantially since 2006, often attributed to increased testing and punitive action for use of performance enhancing drugs. However, there has been concurrent policy change affecting behavior of other league agents that may have also affected game play. I therefore examine the effect of these agents, MLB umpires, on offensive production in baseball. Estimates reveal that a substantial portion of the offensive reduction from 2008 through 2014 can be attributed to changes in the size of the strike zone. Implications are further discussed in the context of firm production relevant outcomes as they relate to the labor force and supervisor performance expectations.
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Hired to be Fired: The Publicity Value of Managers
John Charles Bradbury
Managerial and Decision Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sports teams frequently fire and hire managers when they experience losing. However, determining managerial responsibility for player performance is difficult to measure. This study examines how major-league baseball players perform under different managers and estimates that managers have little effect on performance. The study further investigates whether or not replacing managers serves as a signal to fans that the team is improving, which boosts attendance. The results indicate that new managers were associated with increased attendance in the 2000s; however, such effects were not present in the 1980s and 1990s.
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Jana Gallus
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This natural field experiment tests the effects of purely symbolic awards on volunteer retention in a public goods context. The experiment is conducted at Wikipedia, which faces declining editor retention rates, particularly among newcomers. Randomization assures that award receipt is orthogonal to previous performance. The analysis reveals that awards have a sizeable effect on newcomer retention, which persists over the four quarters following the initial intervention. This is noteworthy for indicating that awards for volunteers can be effective even if they have no impact on the volunteers' future career opportunities. The awards are purely symbolic, and the status increment they produce is limited to the recipients' pseudonymous online identities in a community they have just recently joined. The results can be explained by enhanced self-identification with the community, but they are also in line with recent findings on the role of status and reputation, recognition, and evaluation potential in online communities.
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"Drive On": The Relationship Between Psychological Variables and Effective Squad Leadership
Todd Gilson, Melissa Dix & Marc Lochbaum
Military Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The U.S. Reserve Officer Training Program (ROTC) conducts systematic assessments of cadets' leadership abilities during field training exercises (FTX) to assess their leadership abilities. While cadets in ROTC programs learn specific tactical operation procedures to augment FTX performances, much less is known about the relationship between psychological variables and squad leadership performance. To this end, 220 cadets completed self-efficacy, psychological flexibility, and grit questionnaires, which were then compared to FTX performance scores. Results underscored that only self-efficacy was significantly related to cadets' squad leadership ability. Furthermore, prior service in the U.S. Army had no effect on the performance score one attained, highlighting an interesting paradox. Therefore, while self-efficacy can be cultivated through prior experiences, it seems more prudent to educate ROTC cadets on how to apply psychological skills to bolster self-efficacy in preparation for upcoming challenging leadership experiences.
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Institutionalized Involvement: Teams and Stress in 1990s U.S. Steel
Jaren Haber
Industrial Relations, October 2016, Pages 632-661
Abstract:
Is employee involvement universally either good or bad, a "best practice" or an exploitative tool - or do its effects depend on context? To shed light on this issue, I ask the following question: Do organizational-cultural factors determine whether employees are stressed by membership in teams? By constructing mixed-effects models from a large mid-1990s survey of U.S. steel employees, I find that team membership is linked to increased stress only when implemented in cultural contexts of conflict and distrust. I conclude that the unintended consequences of institutionalized formal practices depend on organizationally specific cultural conditions.
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Ming Leung
University of California Working Paper, September 2016
Abstract:
Extant hiring research has generally focused on understanding outcomes for employees and not on outcomes for employers. I theorize on how employer cognitive hiring decision processes affect their likelihood of extending an offer of employment. I argue that greater variety in the job experiences of candidates in the applicant pool complicates employer comparison processes. Hiring is a two-stage process and I predict that comparison difficulties materialize among a winnowed down consideration set of candidates in this second stage. More experienced employers have less difficulty with variety because they have better constructed preferences. Regression analyses from an online market for contract labor on over 640,000 job postings by over 170,000 employers support my contentions. Greater variety in job experiences among job candidates in the applicant pool leads to a lower likelihood a job offer will be extended to any of them. This relationship is completely mediated by the variety in job candidates in the second stage consideration set. The more experience an employer has in hiring in a domain, the less of an issue variety becomes. Results utilizing an instrumental variable and several supporting analyses are also reported. Contributions to the study of evaluation in markets, hiring, and cognitive processes of categorization are discussed.
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The Role of Communication of Performance Schemes: Evidence from a Field Experiment
Florian Englmaier, Andreas Roider & Uwe Sunde
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In corporate practice, incentive schemes are often complicated even for simple tasks. Hence, the way they are communicated might matter. In a natural field experiment, we study a minimally invasive change in the communication of a well-established incentive scheme - a reminder regarding the piece rate at the beginning of the shift. The experiment was conducted in a large firm where experienced managers work in a team production setting and where incentives for both quantity and quality of output are provided. While the treatment conveyed no additional material information and left the incentive system unchanged, it had significant positive effects on quantity and on managers' compensation. These effects are economically sizable and robust to alternative empirical specifications. We consider various potential mechanisms, but our preferred explanation is that the treatment raised the salience of incentives.
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Customer-supplier relationships and corporate tax avoidance
Ling Cen et al.
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate whether firms in close customer-supplier relationships are better able to identify and implement tax avoidance strategies via supply chains. Consistent with our prediction, we find that both principal customers and their dependent suppliers avoid more taxes than other firms. Further analysis suggests that principal customers and dependent suppliers likely engage in tax strategies involving shifting profits to tax haven subsidiaries. Moreover, tax benefits appear to explain both principal customer firms' and dependent supplier firms' organizational decisions. Overall, our study provides evidence of the importance of tax avoidance as a source of gains from these relationships.