Worker Productivity in Operations Management

Abstract

Worker Productivity in Operations Management reviews the existing literature in operations management on worker productivity and outlines interesting and promising areas of future research. In contrast to approaches that involve estimating productivity at the national level or at the firm level, the author looks at the individual worker as the atomic unit of analysis in order to examine the drivers that impact worker output. Specifically, the author will focus on the operational factors that have been empirically shown to improve the individual worker’s productivity. The research is not exhaustive but is meant to showcase some of the interesting and relevant papers that fall into a few key themes explored in this monograph. The monograph is divided into several chapters that logically build on the preceding sections. Section 2 explores the behavioral micro-foundations of worker productivity. Section 3 considers the worker as a peer in the modern workplace. Sections 4 and 5 examine the design and organization of work, such as how work is assigned to workers, and how tasks are completed, including topics of task division, sequencing, and early task initiation. Section 6 looks at how individual workers can learn to become more productive over time. Finally, section 7 examines interesting areas of future research.