My research focuses on the complex interaction of ethics and productivity.

I study how the same economic and psychological mechanisms that impact employee performance also influence misconduct and other unethical behaviors. I also look into the broader social implications of misconduct and trauma.

FEATURED papers

The Opportunities and Challenges of Behavioral Field Research on Misconduct

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 166: 1-8

Research on behavioral misconduct and ethics across many fields has provided important managerial and policy implications, but has primarily relied on laboratory experiments and survey-based methods to quantify and explain predictors of and mechanisms behind such behavior. This introduction to the Special Issue explains how these more common methods can be complemented by studying misconduct through behavioral data from field settings. We present four classes of behavioral field research, describe their relative strengths and weaknesses, and provide examples from both the Special Issue papers and some of the best preexisting papers. We then explain the key opportunities and challenges facing behavioral field researchers and the tools that address them. Finally, we argue that a combination of methodological approaches will provide the most robust knowledge set on the determinants, mechanisms, and consequences of misconduct and unethical behavior.

Pay-for-Performance and Employee Mental Health: Large Sample Evidence Using Employee Prescription Drug Usage

Academy of Management Discoveries 6(1): 12-38.

This article provides evidence linking pay-for-performance (P4P) adoption by employers to long-term and serious mental health problems in employees. Matching survey-based data on P4P adoption by 1,309 Danish firms with wage, demographic, and medical prescription data of 318,717 full-time employees, we find a 4–6 percent increase in the usage of antidepressant and antianxiety medication after firms adopt P4P. This change is strongest in low-performing and older workers. We also find that workers select in and out of P4P firms based on mental health considerations, which implies that mental health effects influence turnover. We similarly show that low performers are more likely to leave following P4P adoption. Finally, we show sizable but imprecise response differences from female and male employees to the mental health threat of performance-based pay. Women with latent or potential mental health concerns appear to leave firms after P4P adoption, whereas men do not. Although we cannot claim a causal relationship, collectively, our results suggest a model where performance-based pay forces many employees to choose between leaving or else depression and anxiety. Our study expands the existing work by showing that the mental health costs of performance-based pay can be severe enough to necessitate pharmaceutical treatment.

The Influence of Peers in Worker Misconduct: Evidence from Restaurant Theft

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (2021) 23(4): 952-971

Problem definition: Misconduct, such as theft, is a major problem in operational settings, and staffing decisions can either amplify or mitigate this problem as workers influence their peers’ behavior. Peers are known to influence coworker productivity and likely also affect counterproductive behaviors. Academic/practical relevance: Many studies have shown how mechanisms such as helping, knowledge transfer, teaching, and social pressure generate productivity peer effects in service and other settings. Yet few papers empirically examine these effects in counterproductive behaviors. We argue that while the same mechanisms driving productivity spillovers also generate peer effects in misconduct, an additional effect—strategic peer response—reflects how coworkers, under managerial monitoring, adjust misconduct in response to peers’ daily behavior. An additional contribution of this paper is to identify the effect of peers on operational performance in a firm setting. Methodology: We use transaction and theft data from 83,153 servers at 1,049 restaurants across 46 states in the United States. We employ instrumental variable (IV) models to account for both reflection problems and correlated error terms in same-day peer theft. We use Monte Carlo simulations to present how biases identified by a combination of ordinary least squares (OLS) and IV models suggest that managerial oversight might generate negative correlation in the same-day error terms of peers that reflects strategic peer responses. Results: Our results show that although servers are more likely to steal when working with high-theft peers, they steal less as peers steal more on a given day. We also show that this negative correlation in daily peer theft is higher under an information technology system that increases managerial oversight by reporting likely theft to managers. Importantly, we demonstrate how reflection effects can significantly amplify even small peer-effect coefficients to have large organizational implications. Our parameter estimates indicate that doubling a single worker’s average theft amount will increase total theft in an average restaurant by 76%. Doubling all workers’ theft amounts increases totals by 550%. Finally, we show that the positive peer effect from high-theft coworkers only exists for new workers in their first three to five months on the job, consistent with imprinting mechanisms that include knowledge transfer and norms. Managerial implications: The results show that the costs of employing unethical workers is higher than the direct cost of those workers’ misconduct because their behavior spills over into coworkers’ actions and amplifies through reflection effects. Yet our results also suggest that this contagion can be mitigated by managerial oversight. So long as there is sufficient monitoring of misconduct, workers will strategically limit such behavior in response to peers.

Peer Bargaining and Productivity in Teams: Evidence on the Inequitable Division of Pay

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (2021): 933-951

Problem description: A recent trend in personnel operations is to reduce hierarchy and allow employee teams to self-manage tasks, responsibilities, and rewards. Yet, we know little about how this arrangement relates to worker productivity and fairness. Academic/practical relevance: We provide the first firm-based evidence that when service teams are allowed to allocate compensation internally, the ensuing peer-bargaining process can generate inequitable outcomes for women. Methodology: We demonstrate this using fixed-effect models to identify productivity and peer-bargaining traits in 932 workers at 32 large Chinese beauty salons. We measure individual productivity through service and prepaid card sales and measure bargaining through the division of team-based commissions. We also build a parsimonious bargaining model to explain our empirical results. Results: Although productivity and bargaining outcomes are positively correlated, female workers consistently receive bargaining outcomes below their productivity level, whereas men are consistently overcompensated. Importantly, we provide evidence that our results can only be explained by a combination of higher prosociality and lower bargaining power in women. We also demonstrate that the resulting inequity is positively correlated with shorter tenure. Managerial implications: Our findings provide unique organizational evidence on how bargaining among peers relates to productivity in service operations. We show that the discriminatory social dynamics observed throughout society are evident in operational designs that delegate decision rights to teams and that the magnitude in these systems is at least as large as that observed in traditional hierarchical pay systems. Managers must anticipate and mitigate this gender-based inequity because it is in and of itself an operational performance issue, and because of the myriad of productivity, retention, and ethical implications that can result from peer-based bargaining.

Doing Well by Making Well: The Impact of Corporate Wellness Programs on Employee Productivity

Management Science, (2018), 64(11): 4967-4987

This paper investigates the impact of a corporate wellness program on worker productivity using a panel of objective health and productivity data from 111 workers in five laundry plants. Although almost 90% of companies use wellness programs, existing research has focused on cost savings from insurance and absenteeism. We find productivity improvements based both on program participation and postprogram health changes. Sick and healthy individuals who improved their health increased productivity by about 10%, with surveys indicating sources in improved diet and exercise. Although the small worker sample limits both estimate precision and our ability to isolate mechanisms behind this increase, we argue that our results are consistent with improved worker motivation and capability. The study suggests that firms can increase operational productivity through socially responsible health policies that improve both workers’ wellness and economic value, and provides a template for future large-scale studies of health and productivity.

Motivational Spillovers from Awards: Crowding Out in a Multitasking Environment

Organization Science, (2016), 27(2): 286-303

This paper uses data from an attendance award program implemented at one of five industrial laundry plants to show the complex costs of corporate awards previously ignored in the literature. We show that although the attendance award had direct, positive effects on employees who previously had punctuality problems, it also led to strategic gaming behavior centered on the specific eligibility criteria for the award. The award program temporarily changed behavior in award-eligible workers but did not habituate improved attendance. Furthermore, we show that the extrinsic reward from the award program crowded out the internal motivation of those employees who had previously demonstrated excellent attendance, generating worse punctuality during periods of ineligibility. Most novelly, we show that the attendance award program also crowded out internal motivation and performance in tasks not included in the award program. Workers with above average pre-program attendance lost 8% efficiency in daily laundry tasks after the program’s introduction. We argue that these motivational spillovers result from the perceived inequity of internally motivated workers’ previously unrewarded superior attendance contributions. Our paper suggests that even purely symbolic awards can generate gaming and crowding out costs that may spill over to other important tasks.

Cleaning House: The Impact of Information Technology on Employee Corruption and Productivity

Management Science (2015) 61(10): 2299-2319

This paper examines how firm investments in technology-based employee monitoring impact both misconduct and productivity. We use unique and detailed theft and sales data from 392 restaurant locations from five firms that adopt a theft monitoring information technology (IT) product. We use difference-in-differences models with staggered adoption dates to estimate the treatment effect of IT monitoring on theft and productivity. We find significant treatment effects in reduced theft and improved productivity that appear to be primarily driven by changed worker behavior rather than worker turnover. We examine four mechanisms that may drive this productivity result: economic and cognitive multitasking, fairness-based motivation, and perceived increases of general oversight. The observed productivity results represent substantial financial benefits to both firms and the legitimate tip-based earnings of workers. Our results suggest that employee misconduct is not solely a function of individual differences in ethics or morality, but can also be influenced by managerial policies that can benefit both firms and employees.

Compensation and Peer Effects in Competing Sales Teams

Management Science (2014), 60(8): 1965-1984

Customer-Driven Misconduct: How Competition Corrupts Business Practices

Management Science, (2013), 59(8): 1725-1742