 Does relative performance information lower group morale?Lea Heursen Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 209, issue C, 547-559 Abstract: Social comparisons are known to increase individual work morale, but because they could foster competition, they may also negatively impact how well co-workers work together. This paper uses a novel experiment to explore this potential tradeoff. The experiment varies whether members of a reference group receive relative performance information on a knowledge task and measures how this affects the willingness to subsequently help the productivity of others by sharing knowledge with them. The findings reveal that relative performance information spurs competition between members of a reference group when compared to the baseline with no such information. Yet, there is no evidence that relative performance information substantially lowers group morale, that is, the willingness to help the productivity of others in the group. These findings advance our understanding of how relative performance concerns among co-workers affect the way they work together. Keywords: Relative performance information; Relative performance evaluation; Rank feedback; Social incentives; Social and self-image; Knowledge-sharing; On-the-job help; Collaboration; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:209:y:2023:i:c:p:547-559 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.03.004 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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