Nudge practices: A smart and cheap way to manage human resources

• Autor(a) principal: Musarra, Roberto
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/19458
• topic: Nudge management; Nudge theory; Behavioral economic; HR practices; Teoria do Nudge; Práticas de RH; Economia comportamental; Ciência da organização; Economia dos recursos humanos; Ciências do comportamento -- Behavioral sciences

There is a new strand of literature that argues about the possibility to construct some HR practices using insights from behavioral science. These practices are manly inspired by the nudge theory formulated by Thaler and Sunstein (2008). A nudge is something that aims to alter people predictable behavior in order to protect their interests, but without restricting people’s freedom of choice. As we will see in this paper, HR practices built with this setting can lead to remarkable results at minimum or even no costs. This dissertation aims to answer to the following questions: When can we talk of nudge practices? What are the roots of these practices? What are the characteristics that define them? To identify the characteristics that a nudge practice should possess in order to be considered as such, I will first trace the literature behind these kinds of practices. Once this work is done, I extract the relevant variables. To give some empirical evidence to my argument, I picked up a practice that I consider to be a nudge practice and I examine whether this practice possesses all the identified characteristics.