Public Relative Performance Feedback in Complex Service Systems: Improving Productivity through the Adoption of Best Practices

Hummy Song (), Anita Tucker (), Karen Murrell and David Vinson
Additional contact information
Hummy Song: Harvard University
Anita Tucker: Brandeis University
Karen Murrell: Kaiser Permanente
David Vinson: Kaiser Permanente

No 96, Working Papers from Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School

Abstract: Managers of service organizations seek to improve productivity without eroding service quality. We explore whether privately versus publicly disclosing relative performance feedback (RPF) about individual workers' processing times can help achieve this goal. Using three years of patient encounter data from two emergency departments, one of which changed from privately to publicly disclosing RPF to physicians, we find an 8.6% improvement in productivity and no significant reduction in quality associated with implementing public RPF. This benefit is greater when workers are carrying out understandardized, rather than standardized, tasks. We conduct further analyses that suggest the benefit of public RPF may primarily stem from the identification and diffusion of best practices around workflow, rather than from the motivation to be top-ranked or the shame of being bottom-ranked. Thus, our results suggest public RPF can foster the sharing and adoption of strategies for improving the management of workflow.

Keywords: productivity; workflow; relative performance feedback; best practice transfer; empirical operations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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http://www.brandeis.edu/economics/RePEc/brd/doc/Brandeis_WP96.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:brd:wpaper:96

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