Morale-Driven Productivity Loss versus Lobbying Divergence
RCTClinical Trial
When vertical salary gaps expand in non-meritocratic organizations, worker productivity declines could stem either from demotivation due to perceived unfairness (morale effect) or from workers diverting field work toward courting managers (lobbying).
Picture this
Imagine employees in a biased office where supervisor pay jumps up; if workers spend working hours chatting up the boss to gain favor, that is lobbying effort, but if remote workers simply stay home and perform fewer client visits out of frustration, that is a pure morale drop.
What the evidence says
Disclosing higher pay progression under non-meritocracy produced no statistically significant change in worker communication with facility in-charges (-3.8 percentage points; p = 0.954) or non-patient task time share (p = 0.391), rejecting influence activities in favor of morale-driven output reductions.
- Who was studied
- N = 738 Community Health Workers who underestimated supervisor pay at baseline across Peripheral Health Units in Sierra Leone.
- How
- Field experiment tracking self-reported communication likelihood with facility managers and fraction of time allocated to non-patient administrative activities following pay progression disclosures.
What to do
Distinguish between influence activities and demotivation when diagnosing productivity drops in non-meritocratic organizations.
From the source
"Overall, the results provide suggestive evidence that, with low meritocracy, increasing pay progression reduces productivity through negative morale effects."
Promotions_and_Productivity_The_Role_of_Meritocracy_and_Pay_Progression.pdf