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Andrew Wait

University of Sydney, Australia

I am delighted to be able to contribute to the IZA World of Labor project. This is an opportunity to inform both policymakers and practitioners of our research. Doing so disseminates our findings quickly to those who count—the people on the ground

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Professor, University of Sydney, Australia

Research interest

Organizational economics, industrial organization

Website

https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/about/our-people/academic-staff/andrew.wait.html

Qualifications

PhD Economics, Australian National University, 2002

Selected publications

  • The Essentials of Microeconomics. London: Routledge, 2015 (with B. Nguyen).

  • “The evolving nature of the college wage premium.” Economic Modelling 93 (2020): 474–479 (with O. Birulin and V. Smirov).

  • "Worker trust in management and delegation in organizations." Journal of Law, Economics and Organization (Forthcoming) (with K. Meagher).

  • "Watercooler chat, organizational structure and corporate culture." Games and Economic Behavior 118 (2019): 354–365 (with J. Newton and S. D. Simon).

  • "Authority and communication in firms." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 155 (2018): 315–348 (with H. Katayama and K. Meagher).

article(s)

  • Trust in management in organizations

    Employee trust in their managers allows a firm to delegate decision-making, aiding both productivity and profitability

    Kieron MeagherAndrew Wait, April 2023
    It is not possible for a formal employment contract to detail everything an employee should do and when. Informal relationships, in particular trust, allow managers to arrange a business in a more productive way; high-trust firms are both more profitable and faster growing. For example, if they are trusted, managers can delegate decisions to employees with confidence that employees will believe the promised rewards. This is important because employees are often better informed than their bosses. Consequently, firms that rely solely on formal contracts will miss profitable opportunities.
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