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Vacancy The Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) is one of Germany’s leading economic research institutes. The IWH focuses on research in macroeconomics, financial…
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The Gender Reveal: The Effect of Sons on Young Fathers’ Criminal Behavior and Labor Market Activities
Kabir Dasgupta, André Diegmann, Tom Kirchmaier, Alexander Plum
Labour Economics,
October
2022
Abstract
Based on New Zealand’s administrative court charges data, we document child gender-specific differences in future criminal behavior of young fathers. The deterrent impact of having a son on the future likelihood of receiving convictions persists for as long as ten years post-childbirth. Utilizing population-wide monthly tax registers and Census data, we provide key insights into the role model hypothesis. We show that young fathers with a son have (i) a higher likelihood of being in employment, (ii) higher wages and salaries, (iii) lower benefit dependency, (iv) better qualification, and (v) a higher likelihood of being in a partnered relationship.
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Mission, Motivation, and the Active Decision to Work for a Social Cause
Sabrina Jeworrek, Vanessa Mertins
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly,
No. 2,
2022
Abstract
The mission of a job affects the type of worker attracted to an organization but may also provide incentives to an existing workforce. We conducted a natural field experiment with 246 short-term workers. We randomly allocated some of these workers to either a prosocial or a commercial job. Our data suggest that the mission of a job has a performance-enhancing motivational impact on particular individuals only, those with a prosocial attitude. However, the mission is very important if it has been actively selected. Those workers who have chosen to contribute to a social cause outperform the ones randomly assigned to the same job by about half a standard deviation. This effect seems to be a universal phenomenon that is not driven by information about the alternative job, the choice itself, or a particular subgroup.
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“The Good News about Bad News”: Information about Past Organizational Failure and Its Impact on Worker Productivity
Sabrina Jeworrek, Vanessa Mertins, Michael Vlassopoulos
Leadership Quarterly,
No. 3,
2021
Abstract
Failure in organizations is very common. Little is known about whether leaders should provide information about past organizational failure to followers and how this might affect their future performance. We conducted a field experiment in which we recruited temporary workers to carry out a phone campaign to attract new volunteers and randomly assigned them to either receive or not to receive information about a failed mail campaign pursuing the same goal. We find that informed workers performed better, regardless of whether they had previously worked on the failed mail campaign or not. Evidence from a second field experiment with students asked to support voluntarily a campaign for reducing food waste corroborates the finding. We explore the role of leadership tactics behind our findings in a third online survey experiment. We conclude that information about past failure is unlikely to have a negative impact on work performance, and might even lead to performance improvement. Implications for future research on the relevance of leadership tactics when giving such information are discussed.
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Why Is there Resistance to Works Councils In Germany? An Economic Perspective
Steffen Müller, Jens Stegmaier
Economic and Industrial Democracy,
No. 3,
2020
Abstract
Recent empirical research generally finds evidence of positive economic effects for works councils, for example with regard to productivity and – with some limitations – to profits. This makes it necessary to explain why employers’ associations have reservations about works councils. On the basis of an in-depth literature analysis, this article shows that beyond the generally positive findings, there are important heterogeneities in the impact of works councils. The authors argue that those groups of employers that tend to benefit little from employee participation in terms of productivity and profits may well be important enough to shape the agenda of their employers’ organization and have even gained in importance within their organizations in recent years. The authors also discuss the role of deviations from profit-maximizing behavior like risk aversion, short-term profit-maximization and other non-pecuniary motives, as possible reasons for employer resistance.
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Drivers of Effort: Evidence from Employee Absenteeism
Morten Bennedsen, Margarita Tsoutsoura, Daniel Wolfenzon
Journal of Financial Economics,
No. 3,
2019
Abstract
We use detailed information on individual absent spells of all employees in 4140 firms in Denmark to show large differences in average absenteeism across firms. Using employees who switch firms, we decompose days absent into an individual component (e.g., motivation, work ethic) and a firm component (e.g., incentives, corporate culture). We find the firm component explains 50%–60% of the difference in absenteeism across firms, with the individual component explaining the rest. We present suggestive evidence of the mechanisms behind the firm effect with family firm status and concentrated ownership strongly correlated with decreases in absenteeism. We also analyze the firm characteristics that correlate with the individual effect and find that firms with stronger career incentives attract lower-absenteeism employees.
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Mission, Motivation, and the Active Decision to Work for a Social Cause
Sabrina Jeworrek, Vanessa Mertins
Abstract
The mission of a job does not only affect the type of worker attracted to an organisation, but may also provide incentives to an existing workforce. We conducted a natural field experiment with 267 short-time workers and randomly allocated them to either a prosocial or a commercial job. Our data suggest that the mission of a job itself has a performance enhancing motivational impact on particular individuals only, i.e., workers with a prosocial attitude. However, the mission is very important if it has been actively selected. Those workers who have chosen to contribute to a social cause outperform the ones randomly assigned to the same job by about 15 percent. This effect seems to be a universal phenomenon which is not driven by information about the alternative job, the choice itself or a particular subgroup.
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Why is there Resistance to Works Councils in Germany? An Economic Perspective
Steffen Müller, Jens Stegmaier
Abstract
Recent empirical research generally finds evidence of positive economic effects of works councils, for example with regard to productivity and – with some limitations – to profits. This makes it necessary to explain why employers’ associations have reservations against works councils. On the basis of an in-depth literature analysis, we show that beyond the generally positive findings, there are important heterogeneities in the impact of works councils. We argue that those groups of employers that tend to benefit little from employee participation in terms of productivity and profits may well be important enough to shape the agenda of their employers’ organisation and even gained in importance within their organisations in recent years. We also discuss the role of deviations from profit-maximising behaviour like risk aversion, short-term profit maximisation, and other non-pecuniary motives, as possible reasons for employer resistance.
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Arbeit ohne Sinn gefährdet die Produktivität
Sabrina Jeworrek
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 3,
2017
Abstract
Arbeit ohne Sinn ruft nicht nur negative Emotionen wie Enttäuschung oder das Gefühl, ersetzbar zu sein, hervor; vielmehr wird auch die zukünftige Arbeitsmotivation der Beschäftigten beeinflusst. Eine experimentelle Studie, die auf einer realen Arbeitssituation beruht, zeigt, dass Beschäftigte einen signifikant niedrigeren Arbeitseinsatz leisten, wenn ein vorangegangenes Projekt seinen ursprünglichen Sinn verloren hat. Die Information, dass das Projekt auch einen alternativen Zweck erfüllte, kompensiert die negativen Effekte allerdings vollständig, sowohl was den Arbeitseinsatz als auch den emotionalen Zustand der Beschäftigten angeht. Unternehmen und Personalverantwortliche sollten daher die Sinnhaftigkeit von Arbeitsaufgaben klar an ihre Beschäftigten kommunizieren sowie versuchen, auch gescheiterten Projekten eine Sinnhaftigkeit beizumessen.
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26.09.2017 • 34/2017
Meaningless Work Threatens Employees’ Job Performance
Employees show a significant decline in exerted effort when they are informed about the futility of a task already done. As the results of an experiment conducted by Sabrina Jeworrek from the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) and co-authors show, meaningless work causes anger and disappointment, and can negatively affect employees' later motivation. However, employees seem to “forgive” their employer for cancelling a project if another and still valid purpose is credibly communicated.
Sabrina Jeworrek
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