Management and Shocks to Worker Productivity
The assignment of workers to tasks is an important feature of the organization of production within firms. We study how task allocation across workers changes in response to productivity shocks. Pairing hourly productivity data from a ready-made garments firm with granular data on exposure to particulate matter pollution, we show that productivity suffers as a result of pollution shocks; this effect is heterogeneous across workers and tasks. Managers respond by reassigning workers to tasks in which they perform better on average during shocks. This response is larger for managers who we identify, via survey-based measurement, as exhibiting greater managerial attention, and these same managers are also the ones who are most able to mitigate resulting productivity declines.
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Copy CitationAchyuta Adhvaryu, Namrata Kala, and Anant Nyshadham, "Management and Shocks to Worker Productivity," NBER Working Paper 25865 (2019), https://doi.org/10.3386/w25865.
Published Versions
Achyuta Adhvaryu & Namrata Kala & Anant Nyshadham, 2022. "Management and Shocks to Worker Productivity," Journal of Political Economy, vol 130(1), pages 1-47.
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