Universität zu Köln

Vogelsang, Timo (2020). Management Practices and Employee Performance - Causal Evidence from Field- and Laboratory Experiments. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

The research presented in this thesis contributes to the incentive literature in accounting, economics, and management. Chapter two reports the results of two field experiments in a retail chain and show that the effectiveness of performance pay crucially hinges on prior job experience. Introducing sales-based performance pay for district- and later for store-managers, we find negligible average treatment effects. Based on surveys and interviews, we develop a formal model demonstrating that the effect of performance pay decreases with experience and may even vanish in the limit. We provide empirical evidence in line with this hypothesis, for instance, finding positive treatment effects (only) in stores with low job experience. Chapter three addresses the core role of managerial accounting - the processing and provision of information to facilitate managers’ decisions and influence their behavior through incentives. We study the impact of these two roles of information on profits implementing a field experiment in a large retail chain. In a 2x2 factorial design we vary: (i) whether store managers obtain access to decision-facilitating accounting information to raise profits and (ii) whether they receive performance pay based on an objective profit metric to influence their decisions. We find that both practices indeed increase profits. In contrast to our hypothesis, we find no evidence of a complementarity. Net of bonus costs, the mere provision of decision-facilitating information even tends to outperform the combined intervention. Chapter four studies how a gift of more leisure time affects employees’ performance in a real-effort laboratory experiment. Results show that a monetary gift of a 75% wage increase does not alter employee’s performance, compared to a baseline of no gift. A comparable gift of more leisure time, however, significantly increases employee performance by 25%. The mechanism for this is a significant reduction in on-the-job leisure (Internet) consumption by 45%. An online survey experiment among human resource managers provides some external validity.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Vogelsang, Timo vogelsang@wiso.uni-koeln.de UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-112570
Date:	2020
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences > Business Administration > Corporate Development > Professorship for Business Administration and Human Resources Management
Subjects:	Management and auxiliary services
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Management Practices UNSPECIFIED Management Control Systems UNSPECIFIED Incentives UNSPECIFIED Information UNSPECIFIED Decision-Facilitating UNSPECIFIED Field Experiments UNSPECIFIED Leisure Time UNSPECIFIED
Date of oral exam:	7 May 2020
Referee:	Name Academic Title Sliwka, Dirk Prof. Dr. Heinz, Matthias Prof. Dr.
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/11257