Abstract
"24 Social norms, for example, have long had an important impact on gender roles in employment specifically with respect to work/family concerns.25 Moreover, one of the central conclusions of the famous Hawthorne experiments of the 1930s26 was that employee work effort is significantly influenced by the norms of the employee's workgroup with respect to what constitutes an appropriate work level or output.27 Applying this analysis, employees are deemed not "irrational" when they don't increase output in response to increased employer incentive pay; they are simply responding to workplace social norms-i.e., they don't want to be ostracized by fellow employees as "ratebusters.
Citation
Rafael Gely,
The Law and Economics of Identity,
14 Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy
229-242
(2007)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/djglp/vol14/iss1/7