Avner Ben-Ner, University of Minnesota – Treadmill Desks

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Dr. Avner Ben-Ner stated that “a little bit of walking is useful because it means there’s more blood flow to the brain.”

Dr. Avner Ben-Ner, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, is studying the physiological impact that treadmill desks may have on the health of employees.

Avner Ben-Ner is Professor in the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies in the Carlson School of Management and Affiliated Professor in the Law School at the University of Minnesota.

Avner Ben-Ner – Treadmill Desks

His principal contributions to scholarship concern theoretical examinations of the reasons for coexistence of different types of organization in the mixed economy. He analyzed theoretically the reasons why producer cooperatives, employee buy-outs and nonprofit organizations exist alongside private for-profit firms and public organizations. He emphasized that various organizations in the social economy represent collective responses to diverse problems of asymmetric information between workers and management and between consumers and sellers. His theoretical investigations were followed by empirical studies.

Another strand of his work concerns the comparative structure and performance of nonprofit organizations, producer cooperatives, government organizations and for-profit firms, to which he made recent theoretical and empirical contributions. He has written several articles that concern the optimal design of firms relative to their technologies and business strategies. In his theoretical and empirical work, he has shown the importance of balancing various components of organization design, particularly the allocation of decision-making, types and strength of incentives and monitoring, and adjusting them to firm circumstances, particularly technology and strategy. He has also studied empirically the effect of computer-based technology on the evolution of various skills, from the 1970s to the present.

Professor Ben-Ner has also been working on behavioral economics, and has done theoretical and experimental research on cooperation, trust, identity, giving by children relative to parents, and values. He currently works on projects related to diversity in organizations and society. His favorite current research examines the relationship between team composition in Bundesliga teams in all the soccer (futbol) games that took place during the 2000s, evaluating factors that affect player and team performance. He is happy to present this project at departmental workshops and seminars.

His contributions appeared in economics, law, management and psychology journals, including the Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, American Economic Review, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Yale Law Journal, The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, Industrial Relations, Journal of Economic Psychology, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Personality and Individual Differences, PLOS ONE and more, and has written and coedited several books.

Avner has served in various academic administration and faculty governance roles, and was President of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies and Chair of the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management. He has been a regular or visiting professor at Yale, University of California at Davis, University of Haifa, Stony Brook (where he also received his Ph.D. in economics), Tel-Aviv University and Central European University. He has taught short courses in China, South Korea, France, India and Poland.

Dr. Avner Ben-Ner – The Benefit of Treadmill Desks

That physical activity is good for well being is not in doubt. However, there are numerous real and perceived obstacles that prevent a majority of people from engaging in physical activity.

 But what if the opportunity for activity were built into the working day? Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic developed treadmill workstations that do just that. But would employees use them? Would they persist at it? Would this adversely impact their work performance?

 To answer these questions Dr. Levine’s medical team collaborated with our management research team (including UT-Arlington’s Darla Hamman and myself). We offered sedentary volunteers to convert their standard workstations to treadmill workstations where they could stand or walk at speeds of up to 2 mph and could use a standard chair-desk arrangement at will.

 The 40 volunteers were outfitted with accelerometers at the start of the year-long study. Half of them received treadmill workstations during the first two months and the rest six months later. We find that total daily physical activity increased as a result of the adoption of treadmill workstations by about 74 activity calories a day over the previous 900, more than 8%. This is a net increase, over the entire day, sustained, day after day. This is good for health.

 Is it also good for work productivity? We administered weekly performance surveys to participants and all other employees and their supervisors. We find that multiple measures of work performance improved as a result of adoption of treadmills, with overall performance gaining 0.7 points over 7.2 pre-study mean. After an initial productivity gain there was a decline, followed by an increase. Employees probably had to learn how to combine walking at different speeds, standing and sitting with talking on the phone, typing on the computer and thinking on various topics.

 Only more research will tell if treadmill workstations help or inhibit productivity.

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