How monitoring workers can backfire: Evidence from truck drivers in Liberia

VoxDevTalk

Published 29.03.23

Monitoring drivers in Liberia raised effort on average, but broke the trust between managers and well-performing drivers

 

Read "Monitoring and Intrinsic Motivation: Evidence from Liberia’s Trucking Firms" by Golvine de Rochambeau here.

In this episode of VoxDevTalks, we are joined by Golvine de Rochambeau to discuss new research in Liberia, which explores the impacts of managers introducing GPS monitoring for their truck drivers. Standard economic theory predicts this would unambiguously increase workers' effort, and while monitored drivers provide more effort on average, in fact, results from this study show that certain workers push back against this new monitoring technology as it breaks the trust between them and their managers.