Gender Gaps across the Spectrum of Development: Local Talent and Firm Productivity

Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, Virginia Minni and Victor Quintas-Martínez

We ask whether the gendered division of work affects firm productivity across the spectrum of economic development. Personnel records of over 100,000 individuals hired by a global firm that operates in 100 countries reveal that the performance of female employees is higher where women are underrepresented in the candidate pool…

Meaning at Work

Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, Virginia Minni and Luigi Zingales

Firms traditionally use performance rewards to align the workers’ objectives to their own. In this paper, we evaluate a firm’s attempt to do the opposite, that is, to help employees realize their purpose and encourage them to pursue it at work…

Media Features: The Economist – How to Get People to Resign / The Economist – How to Inspire People

Beyond bonuses: the incentive effect of a prosocial initiative on bankers

Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and Alexia Delfino and Matteo Fossi

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, firms, particularly in the banking sector, allocated substantial resources to support initiatives aimed at promoting pro-sociality in the workplace and shaping organizational culture. We partner with one of the world’s largest banks and embed a field experiment within the launch of a new initiative meant to promote pro-sociality. We vary the exposure to the new program across the bank’s 700 offices and 35,000 employees by randomising receipt of the email that announces the launch of the program…

Long-term Unemployment, Volunteering and Re-envisioning the Nature of Work

Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, Virginia Minni, Martina Zanella

Reskilling workers is a crucial challenge for both firms and governments in the face of technological advances in AI and robotics. However, effectively transitioning workers to other sectors involves cultivating a growth mindset, promoting ongoing learning and adaptability. In collaboration with a global consumer goods firm, we develop and test a program designed to reskill blue-collar workers by nurturing a growth mindset…

Value Misalignment at the Workplace

Alexia Delfino and Miguel Espinosa

Large organizations often require employees to collaborate with others who may see the world differently. Yet, little is known about whether misalignment in personal values with managers or colleagues affects performance. Using survey and administrative data from a world-leading bank, we find that employees who don’t share their manager’s values perform worse, with a stronger effect in objective productivity measures than subjective evaluations…

Making the Invisible Hand Visible: Managers and the Allocation of Workers to Jobs

Virginia Minni

Why do managers matter for firm performance? This paper provides evidence of the critical role of managers in matching workers to jobs within the firm using the universe of personnel records from a large multinational firm. The data covers 200,000 white-collar workers and 30,000 managers over 10 years in 100 countries…

The Distinctive Values of Bankers

May 2020, AEA Papers and Proceedings 110: 167-71

Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera and Alexia Delfino

In this paper, we gather data on values held by 38, 827 employees of a major multinational bank in 55 countries around the world. Using the same questions as those asked in the World Values Survey, we are able to ask how aligned or misaligned bankers are with the values of the countries in which they work, and how this differs depending on their rank within the organization…

Losing Prosociality in the Quest for Talent? Sorting, Selection, and Productivity in the delivery of Public Services

May 2020, American Economic Review 110(5): 1355-94

Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, Edward Davenport and Scott S. Lee

We embed a field experiment in a nationwide recruitment drive for a new healthcare position in Zambia to test whether career benefits attract talent at the expense of prosocial motivation…

Social Incentives in Organizations

May 2018, Annual Review of Economics 10:1, 439-463

Nava Ashraf and Oriana Bandiera

We review the evidence on social incentives, namely on how social interactions with colleagues, subordinates, bosses, customers, and others shape agents’ effort choices in organizations…

Altruistic Capital

May 2017, American Economic Review 107(5): 70-75

Nava Ashraf and Oriana Bandiera

To better understand human behavior, econ – omists have enriched the private utility maxi – mization model with altruism and prosociality, reciprocity and fairness, identity, and values ( Akerlof and Kranton 2005; Benabou and Tirole 2003; Besley and Ghatak 2005; Fehr and Schmidt 1999; Rabin 1993; Tabellini 2008 ) …