Middle Managers, Personnel Turnover and Performance: A Long-Term Field Experiment in a Retail Chain
通过随机对照实验，发现零售店CEO要求中层管理者尽力降低员工离职率后，离职率下降20%-25%并持续九个月，但管理者将更多时间投入人力资源而减少客户服务，销售未受影响，效率提升仅体现在公司层面。
In a randomized controlled trial, a large retail chain’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) sets new goals for the managers of the treated stores by asking them to “do what they can” to reduce the employee quit rate. The treatment decreases the quit rate by a fifth to a quarter, lasting nine months before petering out, but reappearing after a reminder. There is no treatment effect on sales. Further analysis reveals that treated store managers spend more time on human resources (HR) and less on customer service. Our findings show that middle managers are instrumental in reducing personnel turnover, but they face a trade-off between investing in different activities in a multitasking environment with limited resources. The treatment does produce efficiency gains. However, these occur only at the firm level. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy.