Absenteeism, Productivity, and Relational Contracts Inside the Firm

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Adhvaryu, Achyuta; Gauthier, Jean-Francois; Nyshadham, Anant; Tamayo, Jorge
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California San Diego; Universite de Montreal; HEC Montreal; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvae026
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 1628-1677
• 关键词: management-practices; team incentives; performance; MARKET; insurance; gravity; teacher; workers; absence; IMPACT

摘要

We study relational contracts among managers using unique data that tracks transfers of workers across teams in Indian ready-made garment factories. We focus on how relational contracts help managers cope with worker absenteeism shocks, which are frequent, often large, weakly correlated across teams, and which substantially reduce team productivity. Together these facts imply gains from sharing workers. We show that managers respond to shocks by lending and borrowing workers in a manner consistent with relational contracting, but many potentially beneficial transfers are unrealized. This is because managers' primary relationships are with a very small subset of potential partners. A borrowing event studies around main trading partners' separations from the firm reinforces the importance of relationships. We show robustness to excluding worker moves least likely to reflect relational borrowing responses to idiosyncratic absenteeism shocks. Counterfactual simulations reveal large gains to reducing costs associated with forming and maintaining additional relationships among managers.