Value Misalignment at the Workplace, joint with Miguel Espinosa

Abstract

We conduct a large-scale survey with a global bank to measure workers' personal values and investigate their power to explain worker-level productivity. Using granular organizational data, we construct measures of workers' value misalignment with their teammates and their boss. We show that workers who have different values than their colleagues and their managers perform worse than those who have similar values. This negative effect is stronger and robust for value misalignment with bosses and in hard productivity measures. Exploratory evidence suggests that value misalignment hinders workers' motivation and increases managers' difficulties in coordinating employees. However, teams with improved and frequent communication can better mitigate the challenges arising from divergent values.