Rind, A.A., Akbar, S., Boubaker, S. et al. (2 more authors) (2022) The role of peer effects in corporate employee welfare policies. British Journal of Management, 33 (3). pp. 1609-1631. ISSN 1045-3172
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of peer effects in the employee welfare policies of organizations. Using US panel data for a sample of 11,451 firm-year observations from 1996 to 2017, we find that firms’ employee welfare decisions are driven by their peers and show that peer firms play a significant role in defining corporate employee welfare policies. Our findings are robust to various sensitivity checks, including alternative definitions of employee welfare, alternative peer proxies and several identification strategies. Our additional analysis shows that herding behaviour is prevalent in followers, who mimic leaders’ behaviour, but we do not find any such relationship for industry leaders. Further, we show evidence suggesting that mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures are driving the peer effects. Finally, we examine the economic consequences of peer mimicking in employee welfare policies and show that it improves focal firms’ value and innovation. Our findings on firms’ peer effects and herding behaviour have policy implications.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Authors. British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy of Management. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 21 Jun 2021 16:52 |
Last Modified: | 28 Jun 2024 15:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/1467-8551.12513 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:174864 |