Employee Recognition and Performance: A Field Experiment
通过一项300多名员工参与的实地实验，发现公开表扬能显著提升后续绩效，尤其是只表扬最优者时，未受表扬的员工贡献了主要绩效提升。
This paper reports the results from a controlled field experiment designed to investigate the causal effect of unannounced, public recognition on employee performance. We hired more than 300 employees to work on a three-hour data-entry task. In a random sample of work groups, workers unexpectedly received recognition after two hours of work. We find that recognition increases subsequent performance substantially, and particularly when recognition is exclusively provided to the best performers. Remarkably, workers who did not receive recognition are mainly responsible for this performance increase. Our results are consistent with workers having a preference for conformity and being reciprocal at the same time. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2291 . This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.