Reactions to (the absence of) control and workplace arrangements: experimental evidence from the internet and the labora
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Reactions to (the absence of) control and workplace arrangements: experimental evidence from the internet and the laboratory Katrin Schmelz1,2 · Anthony Ziegelmeyer3 Received: 22 May 2019 / Revised: 15 April 2020 / Accepted: 26 June 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper reports an experiment designed to assess the influence of workplace arrangements on the reactions to (the absence of) control. We compare behavior in an Internet and a laboratory principal-agent game where the principal can control the agent by implementing a minimum effort requirement. Then the agent chooses an effort costly to her but beneficial to the principal. Our design captures meaningful differences between working from home and working at the office arrangements. Online subjects enjoy greater anonymity than lab subjects, they interact in a less constrained environment than the laboratory, and there is a larger physically-oriented social distance between them. Control is significantly more effective online than in the laboratory. Positive reactions to the principal’s choice not to control are observed in both treatments, but they are significantly weaker online than in the laboratory. Principals often choose the highest control level, which maximizes their earnings. Keywords Hidden benefits of abstaining from control · Laboratory · Internet · Workplace arrangements JEL Classification C81 · C90 · C93 · M52
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1068 3-020-09666-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Katrin Schmelz katrin.schmelz@uni‑konstanz.de Anthony Ziegelmeyer [email protected] 1
University of Konstanz, PO Box D 131, 78457 Konstanz, Germany
2
Thurgau Institute of Economics, Hafenstrasse 6, 8280 Kreuzlingen, Switzerland
3
Queen’s Management School, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
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K. Schmelz, A. Ziegelmeyer
1 Introduction During the early months of 2020, the number of people working from home dramatically increased as a result of the lockdown measures implemented to tackle the spread of Covid-19. With all but key workers confined to their homes, the virtual office became the new norm in many countries around the globe.1 As a result, working patterns could shift permanently as many companies made substantial investments to make remote work possible and workers might not want to return to the office for the entire week. Like other flexible scheduling and work arrangements, working from home (WFH) challenges existing managerial approaches designed for office employees since such approaches might be inadequate to supervise and elicit performance from distant employees. To deal with the lack of direct oversight, employers could either develop supervisory relations based on trust and autonomy or they could turn to tougher supervisory procedures. Whether WFH calls for a different managerial approach heavily depends on whether the nature of the employment relationship, c
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