IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v33y2019i6p1039-1057.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Back to the Shop Floor: Behavioural Insights from Workplace Sociology

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Pendleton

    (University of New South Wales, Australia)

  • Ben Lupton

    (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

  • Andrew Rowe

    (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

  • Richard Whittle

    (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

Abstract

This article compares insights into decision-making and behaviour developed by Kahneman and Tversky in behavioural economics with the main findings from studies of pay incentives in workplace sociology in the middle decades of the 20th century. The article shows how many of the insights offered by behavioural economists, such as loss aversion, were anticipated and considered by the workplace sociologists. It is argued that the sociological studies offer deeper and more convincing accounts of worker behaviour through a better understanding of the role of social structure, context, and social processes in framing and influencing action.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Pendleton & Ben Lupton & Andrew Rowe & Richard Whittle, 2019. "Back to the Shop Floor: Behavioural Insights from Workplace Sociology," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 33(6), pages 1039-1057, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:6:p:1039-1057
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017019847940
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017019847940
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017019847940?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. Andrei Shleifer, 2012. "Psychologists at the Gate: A Review of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1080-1091, December.
    3. Colin Camerer & Linda Babcock & George Loewenstein & Richard Thaler, 1997. "Labor Supply of New York City Cabdrivers: One Day at a Time," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 407-441.
    4. Oriana Bandiera & Iwan Barankay & Imran Rasul, 2005. "Social Preferences and the Response to Incentives: Evidence from Personnel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 917-962.
    5. Uri Gneezy & Stephan Meier & Pedro Rey-Biel, 2011. "When and Why Incentives (Don't) Work to Modify Behavior," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 191-210, Fall.
    6. David Genesove & Christopher Mayer, 2001. "Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(4), pages 1233-1260.
    7. Ian Larkin, 2014. "The Cost of High-Powered Incentives: Employee Gaming in Enterprise Software Sales," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(2), pages 199-227.
    8. Ernst Fehr & Lorenz Goette, 2007. "Do Workers Work More if Wages Are High? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 298-317, March.
    9. Shleifer, Andrei, 2012. "Psychologists at the Gate: Review of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow," Scholarly Articles 10735580, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    10. John Van Maanen, 2011. "Ethnography as Work: Some Rules of Engagement," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 218-234, January.
    11. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Henry S. Farber, 2015. "Why you Can’t Find a Taxi in the Rain and Other Labor Supply Lessons from Cab Drivers," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(4), pages 1975-2026.
    13. Ian Larkin & Lamar Pierce & Francesca Gino, 2012. "The psychological costs of pay‐for‐performance: Implications for the strategic compensation of employees," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(10), pages 1194-1214, October.
    14. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    15. Ian Larkin & Stephen Leider, 2012. "Incentive Schemes, Sorting, and Behavioral Biases of Employees: Experimental Evidence," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 184-214, May.
    16. Daniel Kahneman, 2003. "Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1449-1475, December.
    17. Richard H. Thaler, 2018. "From Cashews to Nudges: The Evolution of Behavioral Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(6), pages 1265-1287, June.
    18. Claire M Zedelius & Harm Veling & Erik Bijleveld & Henk Aarts, 2012. "Promising High Monetary Rewards for Future Task Performance Increases Intermediate Task Performance," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(8), pages 1-8, August.
    19. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation," International Economic Association Series, in: L.-A. Gérard-Varet & S.-C. Kolm & J. Mercier Ythier (ed.), The Economics of Reciprocity, Giving and Altruism, chapter 7, pages 153-173, Palgrave Macmillan.
    20. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    21. Richard H. Thaler, 2016. "Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, and Future," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(7), pages 1577-1600, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Goswami, Indranil & Urminsky, Oleg, 2021. "Don’t fear the meter: How longer time limits bias managers to prefer hiring with flat fee compensation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 42-58.
    2. Haenssgen, Marco J. & Leepreecha, Prasit & Sakboon, Mukdawan & Chu, Ta-Wei & Vlaev, Ivo & Auclair, Elizabeth, 2023. "The impact of conservation and land use transitions on the livelihoods of indigenous peoples: A narrative review of the northern Thai highlands," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    2. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    3. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    4. Altman, Morris, 2014. "Insights from behavioral economics on how labor markets work," Working Paper Series 3466, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    5. Eric J. Allen & Patricia M. Dechow & Devin G. Pope & George Wu, 2017. "Reference-Dependent Preferences: Evidence from Marathon Runners," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(6), pages 1657-1672, June.
    6. Tyran, Jean-Robert & Stephens, Thomas A, 2012. "?At least I didn?t lose money? Nominal Loss Aversion Shapes Evaluations of Housing Transactions," CEPR Discussion Papers 9198, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Brian Chi-ang Lin & Siqi Zheng & Doruk İriş, 2016. "Economic Targets And Loss-Aversion In International Environmental Cooperation," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 624-648, July.
    8. Eduard Marinov, 2017. "The 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 117-159.
    9. Christine L. Exley & Stephen J. Terry, 2019. "Wage Elasticities in Working and Volunteering: The Role of Reference Points in a Laboratory Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(1), pages 413-425, January.
    10. Timothy J. Richards, 2020. "Income Targeting and Farm Labor Supply," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(2), pages 419-438, March.
    11. Nava Ashraf & Colin F. Camerer & George Loewenstein, 2005. "Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(3), pages 131-145, Summer.
    12. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    13. Karle, Heiko & Schumacher, Heiner & Vølund, Rune, 2023. "Consumer loss aversion and scale-dependent psychological switching costs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 214-237.
    14. A. Banerji & Neha Gupta, 2011. "Do Auction Bids Betray Expectations-Based Reference Dependent Preferences? A Test, Experimental Evidence, And Estimates Of Loss Aversion," Working papers 206, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    15. Martin, Vincent, 2017. "When to quit: Narrow bracketing and reference dependence in taxi drivers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 166-187.
    16. David Card & Gordon B. Dahl, 2011. "Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 103-143.
    17. Cosaert, Sam & Lefebvre, Mathieu & Martin, Ludivine, 2022. "Are preferences for work reference dependent or time nonseparable? New experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    18. Johannes Abeler & Armin Falk & Lorenz Goette & David Huffman, 2011. "Reference Points and Effort Provision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 470-492, April.
    19. MacLeod, W Bentley, 2016. "Human capital: Linking behavior to rational choice via dual process theory," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 20-31.
    20. Björn Bartling & Leif Brandes & Daniel Schunk, 2012. "Expectations as reference points: field evidence from experienced subjects in a competitive, high-stakes environment," ECON - Working Papers 073, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:6:p:1039-1057. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.