Saral Speaks at the ILO

Krista Saral at ILO

Krista J. Saral, Assistant Professor of Economics in the George Herbert Walker School of Business and Technology at Webster Geneva Campus, spoke at the Regulating for Decent Work Conference at the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva Switzerland on July 4, 2017.

Her presentation focused on her research into telecommuting (flex-work) teams, which was an economics experiment piloted with Webster Geneva Campus students and has been highlighted by the Harvard Business Review.

The data demonstrate that differences in productivity between people who telecommute versus people who work in a traditional office do not result from shirking by telecommuters; rather, changes in effort result from an individual's belief about the productivity of their teammates. So, people work less when partnered with telecommuters simply because they falsely believe their telecommuting teammates are working less hard.