Control Aversion in Hierarchies

Alessandro De Chiara, Florian Engl, Holger Herz and Ester Manna

No 9779, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Companies typically control various aspects of their workers’ behaviors. In this paper, we investigate whether the hierarchical distance of the superior who imposes such control measures matters for the workers’ ensuing reaction. In particular, we test, in a laboratory experiment, whether potential negative behavioral reactions to imposed control are larger when they are implemented by a direct superior rather than a hierarchically more distant superior. We find that hierarchical proximity indeed magnifies such control aversion and discuss several potential channels for this result.

Keywords: control aversion; hierarchies; delegation; principal-agent-problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D23 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hrm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9779

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