Waiting for Opportunities: Opportunity Assignment and Employee Productivity (with Luchi He and Sendil Ethiraj)"

(co-authored with Luchi He and Sendil Ethiraj)

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Wednesday June 19, 2024 at 4:00 PM

Room 3-E4-SR03 - Rontgen Building

 

This paper identifies the differential allocation of opportunities in task assignment as a source of productivity heterogeneity among employees. It examines how assigning employees to perform the same task under high- vs. low-opportunity conditions affects their future productivity, as well as the underlying mechanisms.

Using transaction data from a restaurant chain, we compare employees’ productivity before and after a temporary assignment to a high-opportunity condition – specifically, serving tables in a popular section with potential for higher sales and tips.

Our findings indicate that an temporary reassignment to serve tables in a high-opportunity section leads to an increase in the servers' hourly sales in subsequent periods when they are assigned back to low-opportunity sections. Further empirical analysis and interviews with managers suggest that the productivity boost appears to stem from skill discovery, skill acquisition and motivation enhancement.