On the Failure to Seek Beneficial Information: The Problem with Inconspicuous Incentives

Leslie K. John; Hayley  Blunden; Katherine L. Milkman; Luca  Foschini; Francesca  Gino; Bradford  Tuckfield

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

On the Failure to Seek Beneficial Information: The Problem with Inconspicuous Incentives

by Leslie K. John, Hayley Blunden, Katherine L. Milkman, Luca Foschini, Francesca Gino and Bradford Tuckfield

Abstract

Managers and policymakers regularly rely on incentives to encourage valued behaviors. While often successful, there are also notable and surprising examples of their ineffectiveness. Why? Perhaps they are not sufficiently conspicuous. In support of this account, in a large-scale field experiment and laboratory study, we show that even when incentives are transparently provided and easily trackable in real time, failing to make them conspicuous renders incentives ineffectual at shifting behavior. Further, we show that inconspicuous incentives are ineffective in part because people fail to seek information on how to improve their outcomes despite being informed that such information exists and even when it can be obtained at the mere click of button. Finally, we show that people fail to appreciate potential beneficiaries’ apparent lack of interest in obtaining incentive information, a result suggesting that purveyors of incentive programs may under-invest in promoting them.

Keywords: incentives; field experiment; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Management; Information;

Language: English

Format: Print

62 pages

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Citation:

John, Leslie K., Hayley Blunden, Katherine L. Milkman, Luca Foschini, Francesca Gino, and Bradford Tuckfield. "On the Failure to Seek Beneficial Information: The Problem with Inconspicuous Incentives." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-090, February 2016. (Revised January 2020.)

Article | Management Science | October 2020

Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance

Diwas S. KC, Bradley R. Staats, Maryam Kouchaki and Francesca Gino

How individuals manage, organize, and complete their tasks is central to operations management. Recent research in operations focuses on how under conditions of increasing workload individuals can decrease their service time, up to a point, in order to complete work more quickly. As the number of tasks increases, however, workers may also manage their workload by a different process—task selection. Drawing on research on workload, individual discretion, and behavioral decision-making, we theorize and then test that under conditions of increased workload, individuals may choose to complete easier tasks in order to manage their load. We label this behavior task completion preference (TCP). Using six years of data from a hospital emergency department, we find that physicians engage in TCP, with implications for their performance. Specifically, TCP helps physicians manage variance in service times; however, while it initially appears to improve shift-level throughput volume, after adjusting for the complexity of the work completed, TCP is related to worse throughput. Moreover, we find that engaging in easier tasks, as compared to hard ones, is related to lower learning in service times. We then turn to the lab to replicate conceptually the short-term task selection effect under increased workload and show that it occurs due to both fatigue and the sense of progress individuals get from task completion. These findings provide another mechanism for the workload-speedup effect from the literature. We also discuss implications for both research and the practice of operations in building systems to help people succeed.

Keywords: healthcare; knowledge work; discretion; Workload; Employees; Health Care and Treatment; Decision Making; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Productivity;

Citation:

KC, Diwas S., Bradley R. Staats, Maryam Kouchaki, and Francesca Gino. "Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance." Management Science 66, no. 10 (October 2020). View Details

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On the Failure to Seek Beneficial Information: The Problem with Inconspicuous Incentives

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