This article investigates how the success of a management practice depends on the underlying values articulated by the management.A large U.S.transportation company is in the process of fitting its trucks with an electronic on-board recorder(EOBR)to provide drivers with information on their driving performance.The company also has commenced a multi-year initiative to remake its internal operations,the first phase of which focuses exclusively on changing values toward a greater emphasis on teamwork and empowerment.In this setting,a natural question is whether the optimal managerial practice consists of:(1)letting each driver know his or her individual performance only;or also(2)providing drivers with information about their performance with respect to other drivers.Using the EOBR-provided driver performance data,we randomize these practices across sites.The main result of our experiment is that(2)leads to better performance than(1)in a particular site if and only if the site has not yet received the values intervention,and worse performance if it has.The result is consistent with the presence of a conflict between competition-based managerial practices and a shift to a cooperation-based value system.More broadly,it highlights the role of intangible factors in determining the optimal set of managerial practices.
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