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Publications
Publications
  • 2018
  • Working Paper
  • HBS Working Paper Series

Who Is More Useful? The Impact of Performance Incentives on Work and Personal Relationships

By: Ashley V. Whillans, Alice Lee-Yoon and Julia Hur
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:59
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Abstract

Employees today report being too busy to talk to their friends and family, even though the number of hours they work has remained relatively constant over the last five decades. We highlight incentive systems as one underappreciated factor contributing to this phenomenon and explore the role of incentives in shaping how employees think about their different social relationships. Results from one archival dataset, one panel survey, and two experiments (n = 132,139) show that when employees are paid for performance, they prioritize spending time socializing with work colleagues at the sacrifice of spending time with friends and family. We further document goal instrumentality as a mechanism for these results: employees who receive performance incentives perceive their work ties as highly instrumental in achieving their goals. These findings provide the first empirical evidence that incentives shape employees’ social interactions within and outside of work, potentially providing a novel explanation for the dissolution of familial and personal ties in many developed countries.

Keywords

Performance Incentives; Work-family Boundary Management; Instrumentality; Lonelines; Employees; Performance; Motivation and Incentives; Work-Life Balance; Emotions

Citation

Whillans, Ashley V., Alice Lee-Yoon, and Julia Hur. "Who Is More Useful? The Impact of Performance Incentives on Work and Personal Relationships." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-050, October 2018. (Revised December 2018, Shared Authorship.)
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About The Author

Ashley V. Whillans

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • February 13, 2023
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    The Secret Tax on Women’s Time

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    The Emotional Rewards of Prosocial Spending Are Robust and Replicable in Large Samples

    By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Ashley V. Whillans
    • 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Perceived Job Difficulty Influences Unionization Support for Workers in Low-Wage Jobs

    By: Elizabeth R. Johnson and Ashley V. Whillans
More from the Authors
  • The Secret Tax on Women’s Time By: Lauren C. Howe, Lindsay B. Howe and Ashley V. Whillans
  • The Emotional Rewards of Prosocial Spending Are Robust and Replicable in Large Samples By: Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Ashley V. Whillans
  • Perceived Job Difficulty Influences Unionization Support for Workers in Low-Wage Jobs By: Elizabeth R. Johnson and Ashley V. Whillans
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