This, he said, was akin to choosing a friend or a life partner.
Some would go further and hire family or friends.
There areeven guidesdedicated to helping managers who hire their friends.
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The US equivalent, theEqual Employment Opportunities laws, similarly aims to reduce workplace discrimination.
In arecent papermyself and two research colleagues, Catherine Eckel and Rick K. Wilson, sought to find out.
In our experiment, we got the students to play afamous two-player gamethat economists use to measure trust.
Whatever they transfer is then multiplied, usually by three, and given to the employee.
The employee must decide how much to give back to the manager.
Both are trying to end up with as much money as possible.
Hence the manager is investing in the employee and trusting them to return some of the investment.
The employee chooses how much to send back to the employer, which is a measure of reciprocity/effort.
In some cases, the employee with the shared values was lower ability.
When faced with employees of equal ability, 80% of managers chose the one from their college.
Even when their fellow college member was lower ability, 40% of managers still chose them.
This suggested that lower ability group members compensated for their handicap by increasing their effort.
Becker had it wrong, in other words.
