Workplace productivity and managerial support issues associated with March Madness

A review of the applied literature on sports‐related gambling and bracketing that is quite widespread in the USA and other countries was provided. A sample consisted of relatively well‐paid, professionals who many routinely engage in office pools and most universally are involved in bracketing March Madness plays, resulting in 145 useable questionnaires recording responses to 28 variables from an initial sampling frame of slightly over 200 potential respondents associated with a major Pittsburgh‐based financial service provider. Multivariate statistical analyses were used to test several hypotheses. It was found that management appears to be successfully delivering the message that office gambling activities harms productivity if management activity discourages office gambling, but there appears to be a trade‐off as labour productivity may be slightly reduced on the short term and employee cohesiveness may increase on the long term. It was also found that the degree of personal involvement is important, the more an employee is involved, and the more of an impact that March Madness activities will have a negative impact on his/her productivity. However, these negative concerns may be mediated with increased employee cohesiveness and morale.