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Speaker:
Nick Zubanov (University of Konstanz)

"Is This Really Kneaded? Identifying and Eliminating Potentially Harmful Monitoring Practices"

Many workers report negative perceptions of monitoring via checklists. We survey workers and managers in a large German bakery chain about the value and time costs to all in-store checklists, leading the firm to randomly remove two of the most perceivedly time-consuming and low-value checklists in half of stores. Sales increase by 2-3\% and trained worker attrition decreases. The beneficial effects of checklist removal are fully concentrated in stores where regional managers predict that the treatment will be effective, reflecting substantial heterogeneity in returns that is well-understood by these upper managers. Effects of checklist removal do not appear to come from workers having more time for production, but rather due to improvements in employee trust and commitment. Following the RCT, the firm implemented firmwide reductions in monitoring, eliminating a checklist that employees regard as demeaning, but keeping a checklist that helps coordinate production

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Registration to Ms. Madeleine Hafner per E-Mail