Running things
A Self-Fulfilling Cycle of Coercive Surveillance: Workers’ Invisibility Practices and Managerial Justification
Michel Anteby & Curtis Chan
Organization Science, March-April 2018, Pages 247-263
Abstract:
In the past few decades, the growth of surveillance has become a fixture of organizational life. Past scholarship has largely explained this growth as the result of traditional managerial demands for added control over workers, coupled with newly available cheap technology (such as closed-circuit televisions and body-worn cameras). We draw on the workplace resistance literature to complement these views by suggesting that workers can also drive such growth. More specifically, we show that workers under surveillance can feel constantly observed and seen, but they can also feel largely unnoticed as individuals by management. This paradoxical experience leads them to interpret the surveillance as coercive and to engage in invisibility practices to attempt to go unseen and remain unnoticed. Management, in turn, interprets these attempts as justification for more surveillance, which encourages workers to engage in even more invisibility practices, thus creating a self-fulfilling cycle of coercive surveillance. Our study therefore offers one of the first endogenous explanations for the growth of surveillance while also isolating unique forms of resistance attached to such surveillance.
Decision-making on the hot seat and the short list: Evidence from college football fourth down decisions
Mark Owens & Michael Roach
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, April 2018, Pages 301–314
Abstract:
This study examines how career considerations influence risky decisions in the labor market for college football head coaches. We use historical data to predict, based on information available prior to the beginning of a given season, whether a coach will be fired or promoted after that season. Indices created from these models are used, along with other relevant data, to analyze the risky decision to attempt a fourth down conversion. We find that decision-making is sensitive to perceived job stability. Coaches who are more likely to be fired become more conservative, attempting fewer fourth down conversions. Conversely, coaches who are more likely to be promoted undertake more risk by attempting to convert more fourth downs. The result is that coaches with less job security are more likely to make decisions that are sub-optimal from the perspective of win-maximization.
Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship
Pierre Azoulay et al.
NBER Working Paper, April 2018
Abstract:
Many observers, and many investors, believe that young people are especially likely to produce the most successful new firms. We use administrative data at the U.S. Census Bureau to study the ages of founders of growth-oriented start-ups in the past decade. Our primary finding is that successful entrepreneurs are middle-aged, not young. The mean founder age for the 1 in 1,000 fastest growing new ventures is 45.0. The findings are broadly similar when considering high-technology sectors, entrepreneurial hubs, and successful firm exits. Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success. These findings strongly reject common hypotheses that emphasize youth as a key trait of successful entrepreneurs.
Let's get this meeting started: Meeting lateness and actual meeting outcomes
Joseph Allen, Nale Lehmann‐Willenbrock & Steven Rogelberg
Journal of Organizational Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Meeting lateness is pervasive and potentially highly consequential for individuals, groups, and organizations. In Study 1, we first examined base rates of lateness to meetings in an employee sample and found that meeting lateness is negatively related to both meeting satisfaction and effectiveness. We then conducted 2 lab studies to better understand the nature of this negative relationship between meeting lateness and meeting outcomes. In Study 2, we manipulated meeting lateness using a confederate and showed that participants' anticipated meeting satisfaction and effectiveness were significantly lower when meetings started late. In Study 3, participants holding actual group meetings were randomly and blindly assigned to either a 10 min late, 5 min late, or a control condition (n = 16 groups in each condition). We found significant differences concerning participants' perceived meeting satisfaction and meeting effectiveness, as well as objective group performance outcomes (number, quality, and feasibility of ideas produced in the meeting). We also identified differences in negative socioemotional group interaction behaviors depending on meeting lateness. In concert, our findings establish meeting lateness as an important organizational phenomenon and provide important conceptual and empirical implications for meeting research and practice.
Status and Career Mobility in Organizational Fields: Chefs and Restaurants in the United States, 1990–2013
Chad Borkenhagen & John Levi Martin
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a set of user-generated data, we examine patterns in the careers of professional chefs. We argue that this is one of many cases in which careers must be understood as shaped by dual structures — the typical occupational structure within a firm, and the organization of firms in a larger field. We then demonstrate how career trajectories may be formalized as movement through a two-dimensional space defined by status in these structures. Building on previous ethnographic work finding that chefs understand the logic of their careers as involving repeated trade-offs between their occupational status (their rank within the kitchen) and organizational status (the status of the restaurant at which they work), we attempt to determine how different trajectories are associated with different outcomes. We find that, despite the somewhat random nature of entrance into the culinary profession, future top-tier chefs disproportionately begin their careers at high-status restaurants. Beyond their auspicious beginnings, these top-chefs-to-be also commonly devote their early careers to maximizing organizational status, forgoing promotions to higher kitchen ranks in favor of low-level jobs at more prestigious restaurants. By comparison, chefs destined to run lower-status restaurants tend to spend their early careers prioritizing rapid advancement within the kitchen, only pursuing jobs at more prestigious restaurants much later in their careers, with limited success.
Build or buy? The individual and unit-level performance of internally versus externally selected managers over time
Philip DeOrtentiis et al.
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
At some point, hiring managers in all organizations face the decision of whether to fill open positions with internal candidates (e.g., through promotions) or to hire external candidates (e.g., from competitors or new entrants into the labor market). Despite this ubiquitous choice, surprisingly little research has compared the effectiveness of internal and external selection or has identified situations in which 1 approach may be better than the other. The authors use theory on human capital resources to predict differences between internal and external hires on manager- and unit-level outcomes. Analysis of data from a quick-service retail organization (N = 3,697) suggested that internally hired managers demonstrated higher levels of individual job performance and commanded lower starting salaries than externally hired managers. At the unit-level, operations led by internal hires demonstrated higher performance on organization-specific criteria (i.e., service performance), whereas no internal–external differences were found on more general criteria (i.e., financial performance). They also found some evidence that differences in unit service performance decreased over time (but did not diminish completely) as external hires improved at a slightly faster rate than internal hires. Overall, these findings underscore the complexity of the recurring “build or buy” decision. The results also suggest that internal hires generally outperform external hires, both individually and collectively, and they do so for less money.
Receptiveness to advice, cognitive ability, and technology adoption
Bradford Barham et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, May 2018, Pages 239–268
Abstract:
We construct a model of technology adoption with agents differing on two dimensions: their cognitive ability and their receptiveness to advice. While cognitive ability unambiguously speeds adoption, receptiveness to advice may speed adoption for individuals with low cognitive ability, but slow adoption for individuals with high cognitive ability. We conduct economic experiments measuring US farmers’ cognitive ability and receptiveness to advice and examine how these characteristics impact their speed of adoption of genetically modified (GM) corn seeds. The empirical analysis shows that early adopters are those who are both quite able cognitively and not receptive to advice.
Inferring Commitment from Rates of Organizational Transition
Arthur Jago & Kristin Laurin
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Organizations often implement changes that can signal their values. However, the most objectively efficient changes do not necessarily serve as the best signals. Across seven experiments, we investigate how different rates of transition influence people’s perceptions of how committed organizations are to the values underlying changes or improvements. We find that slower, less efficient transitions signal greater commitment compared with faster, more efficient transitions that reach otherwise identical endpoints (Experiment 1). Using mediation and moderation strategies, we demonstrate that this discontinuity occurs because people assume slower transitions require relatively more effort to enact (Experiments 2 and 3). Moreover, these commitment inferences persist beyond the point at which changes end (Experiment 4), when further improvement along the same dimension is no longer possible (Experiment 5), and regardless of whether the organization decided to transition either quickly or slowly (Experiment 6). This effect reverses, however, when people can directly compare slower and faster transitions that ultimately reach identical endpoints (Experiment 7). Taken together, these findings suggest that people often infer greater commitment from slower transitions that unfold over time, even when those transitions are objectively inferior to faster alternatives.
Weakening Cultural Strength: Firm Performance Volatility's Impact on Norm Consensus
Matthew Corritore
Stanford Working Paper, February 2018
Abstract:
Cultural strength, or the extent to which there is consensus among employees about the most important norms that guide work in an organization, is thought to increase firm performance. Yet, why cultural strength might change over time in organizations is not well understood, largely due to a lack of longitudinal data on organizational culture for a large, diverse sample of firms. This paper applies a language-based model of organizational culture to employee reviews on the website Glassdoor.com in order to measure cultural strength over time for a diverse sample of nearly 500 publicly-traded firms. The measure is used to test a seminal prediction about the determinants of cultural strength: that firm performance volatility, or highly variable performance over time, inhibits consensus among employees about the most important norms guiding work in the organization. The paper proposes a number of reasons why performance volatility should ultimately decrease cultural strength by reducing norm consensus among employees. Evidence of this relationship is found. While prior work only considers how cultural strength drives firm performance, these results suggest that performance can also drive changes in cultural strength, affirming prior speculation of a cyclical relationship between these constructs. The implications for managers and employees are discussed.
Does it pay to treat employees well? International evidence on the value of employee-friendly culture
Larry Fauver, Michael McDonald & Alvaro Taboada
Journal of Corporate Finance, June 2018, Pages 84-108
Abstract:
We examine the valuation impact of an employee-friendly (EF) culture. Using a sample of 3446 firms from 43 countries for the period 2003 to 2014, we show that firms with a more EF culture are valued higher and perform better (ROA, ROE). Consistent with the good governance view, the impact is stronger for firms in countries with better investor protection and for firms with better governance and lower agency costs. We further document a positive valuation associated with the enactment of laws aimed at improving parental leave policies. The impact on valuation stems from improved technical efficiency. Using various approaches, our results suggest that the impact of an EF culture on firm value is causal.
Human Capital Relatedness and Mergers and Acquisitions
Kyeong Hun Lee, David Mauer & Emma Qianying Xu
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We construct a measure of the pairwise relatedness of firms’ human capital to examine whether human capital relatedness is a key factor in mergers and acquisitions. We find that mergers are more likely and merger returns and postmerger performance are higher when firms have related human capital. These relations are stronger or only present in acquisitions where the merging firms do not operate in the same industries or product markets. Reductions in employment and wages following mergers with high human capital relatedness suggest that the merged firm has greater ability to layoff low quality and/or duplicate employees and reduce labor costs. We further show in a falsification test that human capital relatedness has no effect on acquiring firm returns in asset sales when little or no labor is transferred, which helps validate our measure of human capital relatedness.
Marching to the beat of the drum: The impact of the pace of life in US cities on entrepreneurial work effort
Siddharth Vedula & Phillip Kim
Small Business Economics, March 2018, Pages 569–590
Abstract:
Founders face a variety of challenges while working to establish a viable start-up. In order to successfully overcome the many pressures that they face, founders must make difficult choices about how to allocate their time and how much effort to exert in their ventures. These founders are also embedded in a broader social context, and their efforts are influenced by external conditions. In this study, we examine one particular social condition — pace of life — and its relationship on entrepreneurial work effort. We argue that the pace of life in the region where founders launch and run their ventures affects their work effort over and above other individual- and firm-level characteristics. We also argue that this direct relationship can strengthen or weaken depending on founding team size or entrepreneurial experience. Our longitudinal analyses of nearly 2600 US new ventures from 2004 to 2011 support our arguments. Our work advances prior research on the determinants of entrepreneurial work effort, enhances the literature on social norms and entrepreneurial action, and provides additional insights into the multilevel influences of entrepreneurial activity. While entrepreneurs are commonly perceived as non-conformists who march to the beat of their own drum, we find evidence suggesting that regional pace of life actually sets the tempo for business owners and influences the amount of effort that they allocate to their ventures.
Natural Disasters, Technology Diversity, and Operating Performance
Po-Hsuan Hsu et al.
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we empirically measure the impact of natural disasters on firm-level operating performance and examine if such impact can be mitigated by technology diversification. Using major natural disasters specified by Barrot and Sauvagnat (2015) and factory location data from the toxic release inventory (TRI) database, we first find that firms with factories located in states affected by natural disasters are much less profitable. Secondly, we find that firms with diversified technologies are significantly less subject to the impact of natural disasters, suggesting that technology diversity enhances firms’ sustainability.
Relational Embeddedness and Firm Growth: Comparing Spousal and Sibling Entrepreneurs
Miriam Bird & Thomas Zellweger
Organization Science, March-April 2018, Pages 264-283
Abstract:
Integrating relational embeddedness arguments with Penrosean growth theory, we compare the growth of firms run by spousal entrepreneurs with firms run by sibling entrepreneurs. We theorize that trust, identification, and mutual obligations — the three facets of relational embeddedness — are more pronounced in spousal teams than in sibling teams, which provides spousal teams with advantages over sibling teams in generating firm growth. Probing a sample of all private firms in Sweden over a three-year period, we find support for this conjecture. Exploring boundary conditions to this baseline relationship, we also find that firm age weakens the growth advantages of spousal teams over sibling teams and that industry experience heterogeneity within the entrepreneurial team reinforces these growth advantages. These results provide important contributions for research on firm growth, the social embeddedness of firms, entrepreneurship, and family business.
The Performance Effect of Feedback Frequency and Detail: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Customer Satisfaction
Pablo Casas-Arce, Sofia Lourenço & Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez
Journal of Accounting Research, December 2017, Pages 1051-1088
Abstract:
This paper presents the results from a field experiment that examines the effects of nonfinancial performance feedback on the behavior of professionals working for an insurance repair company. We vary the frequency (weekly and monthly) and the level of detail of the feedback that the 800 professionals receive. Contrary to what we would expect if these professionals conformed to the model of the Bayesian decision maker, more (and more frequent) information does not always help improve performance. In fact, we find that professionals achieve the best outcomes when they receive detailed but infrequent (monthly) feedback. The treatment groups with frequent feedback, regardless of how detailed it is, perform no better than the control group (with monthly and aggregate information). The results are consistent with the information in the latest feedback report being most salient and professionals in the weekly treatments overweighting their most recent performance, hampering their ability to learn.