Driven by social comparisions
Subtitle: how feedback about coworkers' effort influences individual productivity
By: Francesca Gino, Bradley R. Staats
Contributors: Staats, Bradley R.; Harvard Business School
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 11-078; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 11-078.
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2011
Place of publication: [Boston]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 34
Description: Drawing on theoretical insights from research on social comparison processes, this article explores how managers can use performance feedback to sustain employees' motivation and performance in organizations. Using a field experiment at a Japanese bank, we investigate the effects of valence (positive versus negative), type (direct versus indirect), and timing of feedback (one-shot versus persistent) on employee productivity. Our results show that direct negative feedback (e.g., an employee learns her performance falls in the bottom of her group) leads to improvements in employees' performance, while direct positive feedback does not significantly impact performance. Furthermore, indirect negative feedback (i.e., the employee learns she is not in the bottom of her group) worsens productivity while indirect positive feedback (i.e., the employee learns she is not in the top of her group) does not affect it. Finally, both persistently positive and persistently negative feedback lead to improvements in employees' performance. Together, our findings offer insight into the role of performance feedback in motivating productivity in repetitive tasks.
Notes: "February 2011"--Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references.