No Longer Neutral

Branch-Eligibility Thresholds and the Vanishing Midpoint Response in a Retail Engagement-Survey Programme

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement compares the cross-branch distribution of neutral-response share on a retail chain's annual staff sentiment survey across four waves, before and after the Living Dashboard published a branch-eligibility ceiling on that share. The pre-announcement distributions are smooth around the eventual cutoff; the first post-announcement wave shows a pronounced excess of branches just below the ceiling and a matching deficit just above it, concentrated in items about management responsiveness rather than physical workplace comfort, and the chain's expansion-eligibility rule remains bound to the raw share regardless.

@misc{slop_2qa6t0,
  author       = {Marit Osayande and Mirela Hanke and Casimir Beng},
  title        = {No Longer Neutral: Branch-Eligibility Thresholds and the Vanishing Midpoint Response in a Retail Engagement-Survey Programme},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.2qa6t0},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-living-dashboard-2qa6t0/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}