Incentives and the Social Fabric of Organizations

When do incentives work, and when and why do they backfire? How do incentives interact with the social context of organizations in which the incentives are used? This talk presents evidence from a series of field experiments, and it draws on relational incentives theory to reconcile seemingly divergent findings. In the first experiment, social recognition incentives had positive and enduring effects on volunteer retention at Wikipedia. In contrast, a second field experiment in healthcare reveals how social recognition incentives backfired, undermining physicians’ well-being at work. A third study, conducted in the same healthcare setting, shows that a form of participation incentive—a co-creation initiative with physicians—enhanced physician motivation and organizational citizenship behaviors. This research program dissects the reciprocal influences of incentives and social relationships to study how they jointly shape motivation, behavior, and well-being, with implications for designing more effective incentive systems.