The Impact of Absent Coworkers on Productivity in Teams

Sam Hoey (), Thomas Peeters and Jan C. van Ours ()
Additional contact information
Sam Hoey: Erasmus University Rotterdam
Jan C. van Ours: Erasmus School of Economics

No 15455, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study how workers in production teams are affected by the temporary absence and replacement of a coworker. When a substitute coworker is absent, the remaining coworkers produce less output per working time. They compensate for this by increasing their working time at the expense of the (less able) replacement worker, such that the output loss per remaining worker is not significant. When a complementary coworker is absent, we see a similar loss in output per minute worked, but this directly leads to a loss of output produced, because remaining workers do not take over the absent worker’s tasks.

Keywords: team production; worker productivity; absenteeism; ice hockey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 M50 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2023, 83, 102400

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15455.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of absent co-workers on productivity in teams (2023)
Working Paper: The Impact of Absent Coworkers on Productivity in Teams (2022)
Working Paper: The Impact of Absent Coworkers on Productivity in Teams (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15455

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().