ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Behav. Econ.
Sec. Behavioral Labor Economics
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frbhe.2025.1647057
This article is part of the Research TopicHuman-AI interaction from an economics perspectiveView all articles
Performance consequences of automated workplace control
Provisionally accepted- Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria
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This study examines the impact of automated workplace control on employee performance and trust. In light of the rise in remote work and increasing use of algorithmic monitoring, we conduct a controlled experiment to investigate how workers' performance responds to control decisions made by an algorithm compared to a human. Moreover, we investigate spillovers on the subsequent trust in employers. Using a real-effort task and a trust game in an online experiment, we vary the source of control (human or algorithm) and control intensity (low, medium, high). Our findings reveal that control by a human principal (but not an algorithm) enhances worker performance, with no detrimental effects observed for higher control intensity. Despite the performance increase, being controlled by a human principal reduces trusting behavior on the extensive margin, i.e., the likelihood that agents entrust principals any positive amount of their endowment. Exploratory analyses suggest control by human principals is perceived more negatively than control by an algorithm. Our findings suggest that automated workplace control does not have negative ramifications for workers' performance, although it cannot generate the positive effects of human control either.
Keywords: Work performance, Principal-agent relation, Automated control, Monitoring, Control intensity, digitalization, Trust
Received: 17 Jun 2025; Accepted: 02 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dorner and Fellner-Röhling. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Gerlinde Fellner-Röhling, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria
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