CEF.UP – MaR Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – June 4^th , 2024 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. | Room 631 | Online

“Peer pressure and manager pressure in organisations”

Tom Kirchmaier – LSE – London School of Economics and Political Science (England, United Kingdom)

Abstract:

“We study the interaction between horizontal (peer) and vertical (manager) social factors in workers’ motivation. In our setting, individuals work using open-plan desks. Using a natural experiment, we identify a sharp increase in workers’ productivity following the occupation of adjacent desks. We link this peer pressure effect to two key aspects of the worker-manager relation. First, we find stronger peer pressure when managers monitor workers less. Second, we find stronger peer pressure among workers performance-evaluated by the same manager. In a set of counterfactual exercises, we illustrate how organisations could take advantage of these interdependencies to increase worker productivity. ”