Social undermining as a dark side of symbolic awards: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

IF 3.4 2区管理学 Q2 MANAGEMENT Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Pub Date : 2022-11-01 DOI:10.1016/j.obhdp.2022.104184

Teng Li , Runjing Lu

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Abstract

In this paper, we study the effects of non-monetary symbolic awards on winners, losers, and their peers. Using a regression discontinuity design, we examine post-award performance differences between those who barely won a symbolic performance award and those who came just short of winning the award in a large insurance company (Study 1). Our findings show that awarded workers performed worse than their non-awarded counterparts, and worse performance was more severe in more competitive teams. Building on these findings, we explore potential mechanisms using an incentivized real-effort experiment (Study 2). The experiment reveals that award winners’ worse post-award performance relative to unawarded workers was driven by social undermining in the form of deliberate sabotage by coworkers, rather than award winners’ own behavioral changes due to negative motivational effects.

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社会破坏作为象征性奖项的黑暗面:来自回归不连续设计的证据

本文研究了非货币性象征性奖励对赢家、输家及其同伴的影响。使用回归不连续设计，我们检查了大型保险公司中那些几乎没有获得象征性绩效奖的员工和那些差一点获奖的员工之间的奖励后绩效差异(研究1)。我们的研究结果表明，获得奖励的员工比未获得奖励的员工表现更差，并且在竞争更激烈的团队中表现更差。在这些发现的基础上，我们通过一个激励的实际努力实验来探索潜在的机制(研究2)。实验表明，获奖者在获奖后的表现相对于未获奖的员工更差，是由同事蓄意破坏的社会破坏驱动的，而不是由于负面激励效应导致的获奖者自己的行为改变。

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来源期刊

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Multiple-

CiteScore

8.90

自引率

4.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes publishes fundamental research in organizational behavior, organizational psychology, and human cognition, judgment, and decision-making. The journal features articles that present original empirical research, theory development, meta-analysis, and methodological advancements relevant to the substantive domains served by the journal. Topics covered by the journal include perception, cognition, judgment, attitudes, emotion, well-being, motivation, choice, and performance. We are interested in articles that investigate these topics as they pertain to individuals, dyads, groups, and other social collectives. For each topic, we place a premium on articles that make fundamental and substantial contributions to understanding psychological processes relevant to human attitudes, cognitions, and behavior in organizations. In order to be considered for publication in OBHDP a manuscript has to include the following: 1.Demonstrate an interesting behavioral/psychological phenomenon 2.Make a significant theoretical and empirical contribution to the existing literature 3.Identify and test the underlying psychological mechanism for the newly discovered behavioral/psychological phenomenon 4.Have practical implications in organizational context