How to Rank Employees and Keep Them Motivated
«First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado, second prize a set of steak knives, third prize you’re fired». What Alec Baldwin introduces in a famous Glengarry Glen Ross scene is a particularly crude form of performance ranking and what follows in the movie is a story of cheating, betrayal, and infighting as actors attempt to get ahead in the raking. In the real-life, the risks with performance rankings are not too far off. Making use of an experiment, Cassandra Chambers, an Assistant Professor at Bocconi University’s Department of Management and Technology, highlights on the one hand that performance rankings do in fact dramatically reduce levels of cooperation in groups and, on the other, that sharing reputational information (individuals’ histories of pro-social contributions) almost completely offsets the disruptive effect of performance ranks.
«First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado, second prize a set of steak knives, third prize you’re fired». What Alec Baldwin introduces in a famous Glengarry Glen Ross scene is a particularly crude form of performance ranking and what follows in the movie is a story of cheating, betrayal, and infighting as actors attempt to get ahead in the raking. In the real-life, the risks with performance rankings are not too far off. Making use of an experiment, Cassandra Chambers, an Assistant Professor at Bocconi University’s Department of Management and Technology, highlights on the one hand that performance rankings do in fact dramatically reduce levels of cooperation in groups and, on the other, that sharing reputational information (individuals’ histories of pro-social contributions) almost completely offsets the disruptive effect of performance ranks.