Peer pressure and manager pressure in organisations

Diego Battiston, Jordi Blanes i Vidal, Tom Kirchmaier () and Katalin Szemeredi

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

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.

Keywords: social incentives; teamwork; peer pressure; monitoring; managers; peer effects; organisations; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-net
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Working Paper: Peer pressure and manager pressure in organisations (2023)
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