When You Work with a Superman, Will You Also Fly? An Empirical Study of the Impact of Coworkers on Performance
Publication Date
6-1-2012
Abstract
We examine a large operational data set in a casual restaurant setting to study how coworkers’ sales ability level affects other workers’ sales performance. We find that waiters react non-linearly to their coworkers’ ability. In particular, when coworkers’ overall sales ability is low, increasing this ability may prompt waiters to redouble both upselling and cross-selling efforts. When overall coworkers’ ability is high, however, further increasing their ability may trigger waiters to reduce sales efforts. Our empirical findings imply that to maximize sales, managers should mix waiters with heterogeneous ability levels during the same shift. Through a counterfactual analysis, we find that considering the inverted-U shaped peer effects when optimizing current waiters’ schedules without changing their utilization may increase total sales by approximately 2.48 per cent at no extra cost.
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Econometrics, Empirical Study on Staffing; Worker Productivity, Business Analytics, Restaurant Operations, Behavioral Operations Management, Quality/Speed Trade-off
Disciplines
Business Administration, Management, and Operations
DOI
10.2139/ssrn.2071113
Source
SMU Cox: IT & Operations Management (Topic)
Language
English
