The Rationale of Gentle Nudges and its Reflections in the Work Behaviour of Corporate Employees during the Outbreak of Pandemic
Keywords:
Nudges, productivity, work behavior, work culture, employee empowerment
Abstract
Nudges have been emerged as a prominent technique in human resource management through linking the productivity and performance of employees with the gentle alterations made in the existing work environment. The suitability and appropriateness of workplace nudges during the period of COVID-19 need to be assessed to incorporate them in innovative human resource practices and their effectiveness has to be determined in the context of employee engagement and empowerment leading to improved organisational commitment and better work culture. This study focuses on analysing the impact of nudges and their contribution to the productivity and performance of employees during times of chaos. An extensive literature review is conducted to strengthen the theoretical models of nudges in the modified work environment. Multiple cases have been analysed to support the primary and secondary data. Results evidenced categorisation of the strategical measures of corporates as nudge initiatives. The study shows that nudges have positive and negative influences on the behaviour of employees and they check whether the nudges are in alignment with rationality. The paper attempts to determine the effectiveness of nudges in the workplace contributing to increased productivity and improved work culture. It adopts extracts from case studies and insights from reviews offering a comprehensive idea about the implications of workplace nudges during the period of a pandemic.
References
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Yin, K.-R. (1993) Application of Case Study Research. Sage Publication, California, 33-35.
Almarzooqi, B., & Alaamer, F. (2020). Worker Perceptions on Working from Home during COVID-19 Pandemic Empirical Evidence from Bahrain. SSRN Electronic Journal, June. https://doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.3643890
Ambler, T., Braeutigam, S., Stins, J., Rose, S., Swithenby, S., Bates, B., Lennox, A., Bates, C., Breugelmans, E., Campo, K., Gijsbrechts, E., Cabinet Office Behavioral Insights Team, Chandon, P., Hutchinson, J. W., Bradlow, E. T. T., Young, S. H., Danaher, P., Wilson, I.,
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Berry, Gregory. (2011). Enhancing Effectiveness on Virtual TeamsUnderstanding Why Traditional Team Skills Are Insufficient. Journal of Business Communication - J Bus Comm. 48. 186- 206. 10.1177/0021943610397270.
Bhave, D.P., Teo, L.H., & Dalal, R.S. (2020). Privacy at work: A review and a research agenda for a contested terrain. Journal of Management, 46
Bloom, N., Liang, J., Roberts, J., & Ying, Z. J. (2014). Study Homeoffice für 4 =. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), 165–218. https:// doi.org/10.1093/qje/qju032.Advance
Cacioppo, J. T., Hawkley, L. C., Ernst, J. M., Burleson, M., Berntson, G. G., Nouriani, B., & Spiegel, D. (2006). Loneliness within a nomological net: An evolutionary perspective. Journal of Research in Personality, 40
Debnath R, Bardhan R (2020) India nudges to contain COVID-19 pandemic: A reactive public policy analysis using machine-learning based topic modelling. PLoS ONE 15(9): e0238972. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238972
Dhawan, Erica, and Tomas ChamorroPremuzic. "How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team Is Remote." https://hbr.org/, Harvard Business Review, 27 Feb. 2018, hbr. org/2018/02/how-tocollaborateeffectively-if-your-team-is-remote. Accessed 20 May 2020
Ebert, P., & Freibichler, W. (2017). Nudge management: applying behavioural science to increase knowledge worker productivity. Journal of Organization Design, 6(1), 1–6. https://doi. org/10.1186/s41469-017-0014-1
Engel, A. (2018), “Why does culture ’eat strategy for breakfast’?,” forbes”, available at: www.forbes.com/sites/ forbescoachescouncil/2018/11/20/ why-does-culture-eat-strategy-forbreakfast/#44cd62b31e09 (accessed 23 June 2020).
Felin, T. (2014). Nudge: manager as choice architect. SSRN Electronic Journal. retrieved 4 June, 2018, from https:// doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2523922.
Ford, RC and Butts, MA (1991), ‘Is Your Organization Ready for Telecommuting?’, SAM Advanced Management Journal (07497075), 56(4).
Grüne-Yanoff, T. (2012). Old wine in new casks: Libertarian paternalism still violates liberal principles. Social Choice and Welfare, 38(4), 635-645. Retrieved February 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/ stable/41485436
Grunewald, M., Hammermann, A., & Placke, B. (2017). Human Resource Management and Nudging: An Experimental Analysis on Goal Settings in German Companies. International Journal of Economics and Finance, 9(9), 147. https://doi. org/10.5539/ijef.v9n9p147
Haugh, T. (2017). Nudging corporate compliance. American Business Law Journal, 54(4).
Ilieva, V., & Drakulevski, L. (2018). Applying behavioral economics insights at the workplace. Journal of Human Resource Management, 21(2)
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291. doi:10.2307/1914185
Lindebaum, D., Geddes, D., & Jordan, P. J. (editors) (2018). Social Functions of Emotion and Talking About Emotion at Work. Edward Elgar Publishing
Lupu, VL (2017), ‘Teleworking and Its Benefits on Work-Life Balance’, International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences & Arts SGEM,
Mak, S., & Kozlowski, S. W. J. (2019). Virtual teams: Conceptualization, integrative review, and research recommendations. In R. Landers, (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of technology and employee behavior. Cambridge, UK. The Cambridge University Press
Morikawa, M. (2020). Productivity of Working from Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from an Employee Survey. In Covid Economics (Issue 49, pp. 123–147). https://econpapers.repec.org/ RePEc:eti:rpdpjp:20020
Münscher, R., Vetter, M., & Scheuerle, T. (2015). A review and taxonomy of choice architecture techniques. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 29(5)
Nell, P. C., Foss, N. J., Klein, P. G., & Schmitt, J.. (2020). Avoiding Digitalization Traps: Tools for Top Managers. Business Horizons, in press.
Ozcelik, H., and Barsade, S. (2018). No employee an island: Workplace loneliness and employee performance. Academy of Management Journal, 61(6), 2343-2366
Csos, S., Management, P. D., Agency, F. D., Alternatives, R., & Collection, S. D. (2020). Covid-19 crisis : how to adapt your data collection for monitoring and accountability?
Shantz, A., & Latham, G. (2011). The effect of primed goals on employee performance: implications for human resource management. Human Resource Management, 50
Shaw, K. (2004). The Human Resources Revolution: Is It a Productivity Driver? In A. B.Jaffe, J. Lerner, & S. Stern, Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 4 (pp. 69- 114).Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press
Software & IT Services Sector performance, Software & IT Services Company Share/Stock Performance, Yearly Analysis | Results & Earnings. (n.d.). Retrieved February 5, 2021, from https://www.moneycontrol. com/markets/earnings/sectoralperformance/software-it-services/
Sunstein, C. r. (2014). Nudging: A very short guide. Journal of Consumer Policy, 37(4)
Szaszi, B., Palinkas, A., Palfi, B., Szollosi, A., & Aczel, B. (2018). A systematic scoping review of the choice architecture movement: Toward understanding when and why nudges work: Systematic scoping review of the nudge movement. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 31(3)
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
The productivity pitfalls of working from home in the age of COVID-19 | Stanford News. (n.d.). Retrieved December 24, 2020, from https:// news.stanford.edu/2020/03/30/ productivity-pitfalls-working-homeage-covid-19/
Thorstensson, E. (2020). The Influence of Working from Home on Employees ’ Productivity.https://www.divaportal. org/smash/get/diva2:1446903/ FULLTEXT01.pdf
Tylor, E. B., and L. H. Robert. American Anthropological Association, vol. 19, no. 2, 1917, pp. 262- 268, JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/660758. Accessed 17 May 2020
Vyas, S. (2017). Organization Culture and Employee’s Productivity: A Study of Pharmaceutical Industry. International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation, IV(IA), 15–20
Wilk J. (1999) Mind, Nature and the Emerging Science of Change: An Introduction to Metamorphology. In: Cornelis G.C., Smets S., Van Bendegem J.P. (eds) Metadebates on Science. EINSTEIN MEETS MAGRITTE: An Interdisciplinary Reflection on Science, Nature, Art, Human Action and Society, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-94-017-2245-2_6
Yeung, K. (2016). “Hypernudge”: Big Data as a mode of regulation by design. Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), 118–136. doi:10.1080/ 1369118x.2016.1186713
Yin, K.-R. (1993) Application of Case Study Research. Sage Publication, California, 33-35.
