Seminar

Abstract: While recognition is considered a major employee motivation tool by HRM practitioners, sound empirical evidence on its efficacy is just beginning to appear. We contribute to this nascent evidence by running a field experiment involving students on a large undergraduate course. Our treatment, given in randomly selected student groups, was to publicly recognize students who scored within top 30% of their group on the first of the two midterm exams. Our findings are: 1) students in the treatment groups who were not recognized have improved their performance on the second midterm compared to their peers in the control groups; 2) students in the treatment groups who were recognized have done no better than their peers; 3) commitment to the course and the distance between the actual and the top 30% grade moderate the effect of recognition on performance. Discussing several competing theories, we argue that adherence to performance norms is the best explanation to our findings.

(joint with Nicky Hoogveld)