Research

Managing Skills in Organizations: Evidence from a Field Experiment [Working Paper]

with Dirk Sliwka (R&R at Management Science)

We study the value of skill management in organizations. In a natural field experiment with 2,583 service technicians, we exogenously vary managers’ ability to monitor and manage employee skills. We show that skill management is crucial to firm productivity, as removing managers’ access to hard information on employee skill assessments reduced not only overall training intensity but also work performance and employee job satisfaction. Combining detailed personnel records and survey data, we show that the intervention reduced managerial attention towards highly skilled employees, who received less training to broaden their skill set. As a result, performance losses are driven by substantially higher completion times for complex work assignments.

Shaping Habits in Organizations - A Field Experiment [Working Paper]

with Saskia Opitz & Dirk Sliwka

In a field experiment with 829 service technicians in 15 firms, we investigated whether providing a temporary incentive to engage in a novel task over a certain period of time leads to persistent behavior change. We randomly allocated half of the technicians in each firm to a treatment group who received bonuses for regularly performing sales activities for 12 weeks. We find a significant increase in sales performance not only during but also after the incentive phase. Using a post-experimental survey we compare different behavioral channels. We find no evidence for increased automaticity, human capital acquisition, or signals about task priorities, but strong evidence for the role of acquired taste: Technicians in the treatment group report a significantly higher levels of intrinsic motivation not only for the sales activity but also for another customer-oriented task.

Substitutes or Complements? A Firm-Level RCT on the Interplay of Technology and Leadership Contact [Pre-Print]

with Dirk Sliwka & Anne Burmeister

Organizations can leverage leadership and technology to facilitate employee training; however, it is not clear whether leader contact and the use of online learning platforms are substitutes or complements. In a longitudinal firm-level field experiment with 3246 mobile service technicians and 187 supervisors, we tested the effectiveness of two interventions that either substituted or enhanced leader contact in the development process against a control group: In the contact support intervention supervisors receive a new feature that enhances leadership contact through reminders and dashboards, while in the scheduling support intervention, supervisors receive a new feature that makes it easier for them to schedule trainings without consulting their employees. We found that the contact support intervention had significant effects on employee training, job satisfaction and job performance. As a result, the firm rolled out the intervention to all employees permanently. The estimated ROI of the intervention was 807%. Our study underlines the value of leader contact in the employee development process.

Learning from Errors: Evidence from the Field [Pre-Print]

solo-authored

Mistakes are an inevitable part of work, and managers play a central role in preventing and addressing them. While a large literature examines how to prevent errors from recurring, evidence on their indirect effects on subsequent performance is scarce. This paper studies the learning effects of error management across 50 firms and 3,200 technicians. Using an event study design, I show that employee output strongly increases after a manager has confronted an employee with an error reported by an external party. The effects are large and persistent, but come at the cost of a modest reduction in assignment quality. The increase in output is driven by initially low-performing employees, who have lower ex-ante knowledge and a longer learning curve, suggesting that the intervention led them to learn from their mistakes. These results highlight the indirect effect of behavioral controls on employee productivity.

Work in Progress

Gamified Learning and Monetary Incentives: A Field Experiment (with Simon Lübke & Dirk Sliwka)

How does Job Experience Impact Career Choices? – Evidence from Law Clerks (with Matthias Heinz, Johannes Rottmann, & Heiner Schumacher)

Gender Differences in High-Stakes Exams: Evidence from Law (with Matthias Heinz, Johannes Rottmann, Heiner Schumacher, & Amelie Schiprowski)