A Contribution to the Empirics of Teaching Operations Management: Reverse Causation Evidence on the Effort- Performance Relationship

The effort-performance relationship implies that students who put forth greater effort should outperform those who put forth less effort. This research uses data from a series of senior level Operations Management courses and finds existence of a causal relationship where performance prior to the course, as measured by GPA, relates positively to the probability of a student undertaking an optional extra credit homework assignment in the course, which is our measure of effort. We further found that GPA is more significant predictor of effort than any endogenous element contained within the course itself. Additionally we found that female students are also likely to put forth a larger effort than male students are, as implied by their willingness to do the extra credit homework assignment. Finally, while we are aware of the saying that practice makes perfect, we found that perfect (a pre-existing high GPA) makes practice (greater effort).