Publications

Spring 2023
Article

Incentive Contract Design and Employee-Initiated Innovation: Evidence from the Field

By: Wei Cai, Susanna Gallani and Jee-Eun Shin

This study examines how the design of incentive contracts for tasks defined as workers’ official responsibilities (i.e., standard tasks) influences workers’ propensity to engage in employee-initiated innovation (EII). EII corresponds to innovation activities that are... View Details

Keywords: Employee-initiated Innovation; Contract Design; Rank-and-file; Extra-role Behaviors; Compensation and Benefits; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation and Management

March 1990 (Revised October 1999)
Case

Mary Kay Cosmetics: Sales Force Incentives (A)

By: Robert L. Simons and Hilary Weston

Describes the incentive system by which Mary Kay Cosmetics motivates the sales force of 200,000 independent agents who comprise the firm's only distribution channel. Illustrates the powerful effect on sales-force behavior that results when creative types of employee... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Cost Management; Salesforce Management; Distribution Channels; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; United States

23 Oct 2013
News

Three Things that Actually Motivate Employees

December 1989
Article

LDC Debt: Forgiveness, Indexation, and Investment Incentives

By: K. A. Froot, D. Scharfstein and J. Stein

Keywords: Debt Reduction; Chapter 7; Default; Debt Restructuring; Borrowing and Debt

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools

13 Dec 2011
News

What Motivates Tomorrow's Leaders

01 Mar 2012
News

The Incentive Bubble

Article

On Coalition Incentive Compatibility

By: Jerry R. Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont

13 Aug 2012
News

When Good Incentives Lead to Bad Decisions

26 Feb 2019
Blog Post

Forget Cash. Here Are Better Ways to Motivate Employees

Whillans co-wrote a recent article in Compensation & Benefits Review, “Winning the War for Talent: Modern Motivational Methods for Attracting and Retaining Employees,” with Anais Thibault-Landry of the... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

March 2022 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Innovation at Moog Inc.

By: Brian J. Hall, Ashley V. Whillans, Davis Heniford, Dominika Randle and Caroline Witten

This case focuses on the challenges of incentivizing innovation within Moog, an engineering company based in New York state that designs and builds guidance systems for space, air, and land-based travel. The case enables students to grapple with the challenges of using... View Details

March 2003
Supplement

Incentive Games, The

By: Jason R. Barro, Kathleen L. McGinn, Arleen Cavanaugh and Aaron Zimmerman

August 2014
Article

Incentives in a Stage-Gate Process

By: Raul O. Chao, Kenneth C. Lichtendahl and Yael Grushka-Cockayne

Many large organizations use a stage‐gate process to manage new product development projects. In a typical stage‐gate process project managers learn about potential ideas from research and exert effort in development while senior executives make intervening go/no‐go... View Details

Keywords: Stage-Gate Process; Production; Operations; Product Development; Innovation and Invention

2020
Working Paper

Recognition Incentives for Internal Crowdsourcing: A Field Experiment at NASA

By: Jana Gallus, Olivia S. Jung and Karim R. Lakhani

What might motivate employees to participate in internal crowdsourcing, a peer-based approach to innovation? Should organizations use incentives that are congruent with their established hierarchical structures, or should they use incentives that are aligned with the... View Details

Keywords: Online Platforms; Employee Engagement; Managerial Recognition; Innovation and Management; Employees; Motivation and Incentives

SSRN

Summer 2016
Article

Motivated Bayesians: Feeling Moral While Acting Egoistically

By: Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton and Roberto A. Weber

A growing body of research yields ample evidence that individuals’ behavior often reflects an apparent concern for moral considerations. Using a broad definition of morality—to include varied non-egoistic motivations such as fairness, honesty, and efficiency as... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Ethics

27 Apr 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Is Overconfidence a Motivated Bias? Experimental Evidence

Keywords: by Jennifer M. Logg, Uriel Haran, and Don A. Moore

April 2024
Background Note

Leader as a Motivator

By: Boris Groysberg, Robin Abrahams and Katherine Connolly Baden

2006
Working Paper

The Limits of Authority: Motivation versus Coordination

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper studies the effects of open disagreement on motivation and coordination. It shows how, in the presence of differing priors, motivation and coordination impose conflicting demands on the allocation of authority, leading to a trade-off between the... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Governance Controls; Organizational Culture; Agency Theory; Conflict and Resolution; Motivation and Incentives

SSRN

January 2002
Background Note

A Note on Incentives in the NFL

By: Brian J. Hall and Jonathan Lim

This case describes compensation and incentive issues in one of the major U.S. professional sports leagues, the National Football League (NFL). It first provides some background information on the labor market for players and the salary cap and then describes incentive... View Details

Keywords: Compensation and Benefits; Labor and Management Relations; Conflict and Resolution; Motivation and Incentives; Sports; Sports Industry; United States