Rapport in Organizations: Evidence from Fast Food

Common identity often provides a foundation for workplace rapport. Though gender is perhaps the most frequently studied dimension of identity among workers, little is known about how gender match between managers and their workers might affect team performance. Using personnel and productivity data from the universe of fast food restaurants of a large chain in Colombia, we study whether mismatched gender identity between managers and workers affects the team’s ability to deal with demand shocks. We leverage the staggered expansion of a leading food delivery platform across the country to study how well managers are able to adjust worker staffing to match resulting increases in demand. In this setting, managers spend considerable time and attention on training workers in tasks and allocating them to shifts to meet variable demand. Worker cooperation is critical for the manager to successfully accomplish both of these tasks. We show that stores in which managers and workers share predominantly the same gender: 1) have better communication and rapport between their managers and workers; 2) have more broadly-skilled workers who are more easily reallocated across shifts; 3) exhibit the largest impacts on observed worker reallocation following the delivery platform implementation; and consequently, 4) realize nearly three times the sales gains relative to stores in which predominantly male managers supervise predominantly female workers. Stores with female managers and predominantly male workers suffer less from gender mismatch, consistent with female managers being generally more aware of and responsive to workers’ scheduling constraints.