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  • April 2019
  • Article
  • Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence

By: Andrea Blasco, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani and Michael Menietti
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Abstract

Understanding why employees go the extra mile at work is a key problem for many organizations. We conduct a field experiment at a medical organization to study motivations for employees to submit project proposals for organizational improvement. In total, we analyze 1,237 employees, 118 proposals, and quality evaluations for more than 12,000 evaluator-proposal pairs. The analysis shows that solicitations offering a personal reward for top submissions boost participation rates without affecting submission quality. We show that this is due to workers partially internalizing the positive effects of their submissions on the other individuals in the workplace. We also find that offering employees project funding to implement their own proposals potentially backfires, undermining participation. And solicitations emphasizing mission-oriented goals, like improving patient care, are sensitive to the solicited person’s gender, with women responding more than men. These results shed light on the factors that drive employees’ engagement in organizational tasks, beyond regular duties, and provide insights on how to design incentives to foster contributions to public goods inside organizations.

Keywords

Field Experiment; Innovation; Contest; Incentives; Free-rider Problem; Healthcare Organizations; Employees; Motivation And Incentives; Innovation And Invention; Organizations; Performance Improvement; Perspective

Citation

Blasco, Andrea, Olivia S. Jung, Karim R. Lakhani, and Michael Menietti. "Incentives for Public Goods Inside Organizations: Field Experimental Evidence." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 160 (April 2019): 214–229.
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About The Author

Karim R. Lakhani

Technology and Operations Management
→More Publications

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  • Resilience vs. Vulnerability: Psychological Safety and Reporting of Near Misses with Varying Proximity to Harm in Radiation Oncology By: Olivia Jung, Palak Kundu, Amy C. Edmondson, John Hegde, Nzhde Agazaryan, Michael Steinberg and Ann Raldow
  • Learning with People Like Me: The Role of Age-Similar Peers on Online Business Course Engagement By: Laura R. Huber, Jacqueline N. Lane and Karim R. Lakhani
  • Experiment B Box Search Implemented By: Iavor I Bojinov and Karim R. Lakhani
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