Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/232487 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8890
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We conduct a field experiment with remote workers to assess potential adverse effects of monitoring. We find that monitoring reduces the average performance of workers, in particular among the intrinsically motivated workforce. Moreover, monitoring cultivates the average worker: There are fewer high performers and the variance in performance is significantly reduced. Importantly, we show that performance reductions primarily occur among challenging tasks. These performance reductions significantly increase unit costs in our setting. This effect is particularly severe when challenging tasks have high marginal value, as in high-performance work systems or when tasks are complementary inputs into the production function.
Subjects: 
monitoring
hidden costs of control
remote work
field experiment
JEL: 
C93
D21
J24
M50
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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