Date: Thursday, 8 February 2024, at 12:15 pm
Venue: Seminar Room 237, DEM
Speaker: Sliwka Dirk (University of Cologne)
Title: “Supervisor Monitoring and Human Capital Investments – A Field Experiment”
Abstract:
We study a reduction in employee monitoring in a field experiment with 2.425 employees from a large service organization. Employees are supposed to take part in regular skill assessments and have regular meetings with their supervisors to discuss their training needs. Employees in the treatment group are told not to reveal the outcomes of the skill assessments and supervisors are explicitly told not to ask for these.
We find that this reduction in monitoring significantly reduces assessment participation and human capital investments (trainings) and also find some evidence that it reduced performance. Moreover, we find strong evidence for the role of employee’s image concerns as a driver of behavior. Post-experimental survey outcomes also show a significant reduction in employee job satisfaction and perceived feedback quality.