Upskilling the frontline: the organizational effects of supervisor training in low-wage workplaces

Working paper

Institutional theory explains organizational responses to external pressures through decoupling between formal adoption and substantive practice, but existing accounts are derived largely from compliance-based interventions in Global North settings. This paper examines how capability-based interventions, defined as those that embed practices in individuals rather than formal structures, reshape the conditions under which decoupling arises. When interventions are enacted through actors situated in the technical core, ”policy-practice” decoupling can be attenuated. However, ”means-ends” decoupling may emerge when the authority required to convert capability into outcomes is contested. The trade-offs are particularly visible in Global South production contexts, where role-level gender segregation makes supervisory authority socially evaluated rather than presumed by formal title. Moreover, tightly interlinked production practices place coordination at the center of performance evaluations. We test these arguments using a large-scale program that trains and promotes women into first-line supervisory roles in Bangladesh’s ready-made garment sector. Using matched within-factory comparisons and high-frequency production data, we estimate effects on operational efficiency, subordinate evaluations of supervisory practice, and working conditions. Lines managed by trained female supervisors operate more efficiently, with gains accumulating over the supervisor’s tenure in the position. A gender decomposition reveals that capability investment offsets a substantial evaluative penalty that untrained women supervisors face relative to men, and that intervention effects are concentrated in outcomes dependent on relational coordination. The findings identify how capability-based interventions shift the locus of decoupling and identify the organizational conditions under which transnational governance produces substantive change.

Authors: Khan, M; Rabbani, A; Woodruff, C

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford
• Series: CSAE Working Paper Series
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2025-06-09
• Paper number: csae-wps-2025-07-02
• Language: English
• Keywords: managerial capability; CSR; gender; organizational performance; decoupling; relational coordination; global supply chains