Why Genius Leads to Adversity: Experimental Evidence on the Reputational Effects of Task Difficulty Choices

Elena Katok () and Enno Siemsen ()
Additional contact information
Enno Siemsen: Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455

Management Science, 2011, vol. 57, issue 6, 1042-1054

Abstract: We use a behavioral laboratory experiment to study how agents with reputation concerns select the difficulty of their tasks. Drawing upon existing theory, we subjected participants in our study to a context in which they had to convince a principal of their capability to reap financial benefits. Our results show that participants tended to increase the difficulty of their task to enhance their reputation. In addition, we provide evidence that performance rewards reduce a less capable agent's tendency to choose a more difficult task, whereas a highly capable agent's pattern of choices is unaffected by performance rewards. Although the productivity of agents in our experiment therefore decreased if they had to convince a principal of their capability, we show that these detrimental performance implications can to some degree be overcome for less capable agents through performance rewards or by ensuring that the principal can interpret the agent's choice. This paper was accepted by Christoph Loch, R&D and product development.

Keywords: incentives in R&D; behavioral operations; career concerns; decentralization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1110.1331 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:57:y:2011:i:6:p:1042-1054

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().