We test the effectiveness of team incentives by running a natural field experiment in a retail chain of 193 shops and 1,300 employees. As a response to intensified product market competition, the firm offered a bonus to shop teams for surpassing sales targets. A bonus to teams rather than...

In a large German bakery chain, many workers report negative perceptions of monitoring via checklists. We survey workers and managers 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...

We estimate the effect of downsizing announcement on workplace performance using data from a German bakery chain of 193 shops. Faced with intensified competition, the firm decided to sell or close down 57 of its worst performing shops. We identify the effect of downsizing from a plausibly...

In an RCT, a large retail chain's CEO sets new goals for the managers of the treated stores by asking them 'to do what they can' to reduce the employee quit rate. The treatment decreases the quit rate by a fifth to a quarter, lasting nine months before petering out, but reappearing after a...

Employee referral programs (ERPs) are randomly introduced in a grocery chain. On direct effects, larger referral bonuses increase referral quantity but decrease quality, though the increase in referrals from ERPs is modest. However, the overall effect of having an ERP is substantial, reducing...

Anonymous and unannounced site inspections known as "Mystery Shopping" (MS) are common in multi-site service firms, but little is known about the strategic importance of this practice. We conceptualize MS as a monitoring tool firms use to implement the optimal allocation of site resources...

In a field experiment with a retail chain (1,300 employees, 193 shops), randomly selected sales teams received a bonus. The bonus increases both sales and number of customers dealt with by 3%. Each dollar spent on the bonus generates $3.80 in sales, and $2.10 in profit. Wages increase by 2.2%...

We establish the existence of strong media slant against foreign owners. Using a unique data set from nation-wide distributed quality newspapers in Germany, we find that a foreign firm that downsizes in Germany receives almost twice as much attention than a domestic firm. This quantitative slant...