IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/cepsud/311.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monitoring Harassment in Organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Laura Boudreau

    (Columbia University)

  • Sylvain Chassang

    (Princeton University)

  • Ada González-Torre

    (Ben Gurion University)

  • Rachel Heath

    (University of Washington)

Abstract

We evaluate secure survey methods designed for the ongoing monitoring of harassment in organizations. To do so, we partner with a large Bangladeshi garment manufacturer and experiment with different designs of phone-based worker surveys. “Hard†garbling (HG) responses to sensitive questions, i.e., automatically recording a random subset as complaints, increases reporting of physical harassment by 290%, sexual harassment by 271%, and threatening behavior by 45%, from reporting rates of 1.5%, 1.8%, and 9.9%, respectively, under the status quo of direct elicitation. Rapport-building and removing team identifiers from responses do not significantly increase reporting. We show that garbled reports can be used to consistently estimate policy-relevant statistics of harassment, including: How prevalent is it? What share of managers is responsible for the misbehavior? and, How isolated are its victims? In our data, harassment is widespread, the problem is not restricted to a minority of managers, and victims are often isolated within teams.

Suggested Citation

  • Laura Boudreau & Sylvain Chassang & Ada González-Torre & Rachel Heath, 2023. "Monitoring Harassment in Organizations," Working Papers 311, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:cepsud:311
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.sylvainchassang.org/assets/papers/sensitive_stats.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anderson, Michael L., 2008. "Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(484), pages 1481-1495.
    2. Mehmet Bac, 2009. "An economic rationale for firing whistleblowers," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 233-256, June.
    3. Sandeep Kapur, 2009. "An Economic Model of Whistle-Blower Policy," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 157-182, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cai, Xiqian & Chen, Shuai & Cheng, Zhengquan, 2024. "The #MeToo Movement and Judges' Gender Gap in Decisions," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1453, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    2. Nugent, Jeffrey B., 2023. "A new institutional perspective on business associations: Filling a gap between firms and states in the dynamic analysis of Richard Day," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 49-59.
    3. Cai, Xiqian & Chen, Shuai & Cheng, Zhengquan, 2024. "The #Metoo Movement and Judges' Gender Gap in Decisions," IZA Discussion Papers 17115, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Makowsky, Michael D. & Wang, Siyu, 2018. "Embezzlement, whistleblowing, and organizational architecture: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 58-75.
    2. Laura Boudreau & Sylvain Chassang & Ada González-Torre & Rachel Heath, 2023. "Monitoring Harassment in Organizations," Working Papers 2022-19, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    3. Cantoni, Enrico & Gazzè, Ludovica & Schafer, Jerome, 2021. "Turnout in concurrent elections: Evidence from two quasi-experiments in Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    4. Hwang, Yujung & Nguyen, Toan, 2025. "Is sex ratio a valid distribution factor in a collective model?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    5. Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Zhao, Jun, 2020. "Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 219(1), pages 101-122.
    6. Gaurav Dhamija & Punarjit Roychowdhury & Binay Shankar, 2025. "Does urbanization empower women? Evidence from India," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 38(1), pages 1-47, March.
    7. Michael L. Anderson & Fangwen Lu, 2017. "Learning to Manage and Managing to Learn: The Effects of Student Leadership Service," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(10), pages 3246-3261, October.
    8. Emilio Depetris-Chauvin & Ömer Özak, 2020. "The origins of the division of labor in pre-industrial times," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 297-340, September.
    9. Takao Kato & Yang Song, 2022. "Advising, gender, and performance: Evidence from a university with exogenous adviser–student gender match," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 121-141, January.
    10. Fernández Guerrico, Sofía, 2021. "The effects of trade-induced worker displacement on health and mortality in Mexico," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    11. Billings, Stephen B. & Johnson, Erik B., 2012. "A non-parametric test for industrial specialization," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 312-331.
    12. Daniel Bjorkegren & Joshua Blumenstock & Omowunmi Folajimi-Senjobi & Jacqueline Mauro & Suraj R. Nair, 2022. "Instant Loans Can Lift Subjective Well-Being: A Randomized Evaluation of Digital Credit in Nigeria," Papers 2202.13540, arXiv.org.
    13. Bernard, Tanguy & Dercon, Stefan & Orkin, Kate & Schinaia, Giulio & Seyoum Taffesse, Alemayehu, 2023. "The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Long-term Outcomes in Rural Ethiopia," CEPR Discussion Papers 18492, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Cygan-Rehm, Kamila & Karbownik, Krzysztof, 2022. "The effects of incentivizing early prenatal care on infant health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    15. Cattaneo, Cristina & Grieco, Daniela, 2021. "Turning opposition into support to immigration: The role of narratives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 785-801.
    16. Plamen Nikolov & Steve Yeh, 2021. "Reaping the Rewards Later: How Education Improves Old-Age Cognition in South Africa," Papers 2109.02177, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2021.
    17. Bhukta, Rikhia & Pakrashi, Debayan & Saha, Sarani & Sedai, Ashish, 2024. "Community electrification and women’s autonomy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    18. Gharad Bryan & Dean Karlan & Adam Osman, 2024. "Big Loans to Small Businesses: Predicting Winners and Losers in an Entrepreneurial Lending Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(9), pages 2825-2860, September.
    19. Michael Baker & Kevin Milligan, 2016. "Boy-Girl Differences in Parental Time Investments: Evidence from Three Countries," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(4), pages 399-441.
    20. Clément de Chaisemartin & Nicolás Navarrete H., 2023. "The Direct and Spillover Effects of a Nationwide Socioemotional Learning Program for Disruptive Students," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(3), pages 729-769.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Harassment; whistleblowing; garbling; secure survey design; gender; garments; Bangladesh;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C42 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Survey Methods
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J81 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Working Conditions
    • J83 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Workers' Rights
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pri:cepsud:311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bobray Bordelon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.