Can a workplace have an attitude problem? Workplace effects on employee attitudes and organizational performance

Ann P. Bartel, Richard B. Freeman, Casey Ichniowski, Morris M Kleiner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

Using the employee opinion survey responses from several thousand employees working in 193 branches of a major U.S. bank, we consider whether there is a distinctive workplace component to employee attitudes despite the common set of corporate human resource management practices that cover all the branches. Several different empirical tests consistently point to the existence of a systematic branch-specific component to employee attitudes. "Branch effects" can also explain why a significant positive cross-sectional correlation between branch-level employee attitudes and branch sales performance is not observed in longitudinal fixed-effects sales models. The results of our empirical tests concerning the determinants of employee attitudes and the determinants of branch sales are consistent with an interpretation that workplace-specific factors lead to better outcomes for both employees and the bank, and that these factors are more likely to be some aspect of the branches' internal operations rather than some characteristic of the external market of the branch.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)411-423
Number of pages13
JournalLabour Economics
Volume18
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2011

Keywords

  • Employee attitudes
  • Workplace productivity

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Can a workplace have an attitude problem? Workplace effects on employee attitudes and organizational performance'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this