scholarly journals Incentives Can’t Buy Me Knowledge: The Missing Effects of Appreciation and Aligned Performance Appraisals on Knowledge Sharing of Public Employees

2021 ◽  
pp. 0734371X2098683
Author(s):  
Caroline Fischer

This study examines whether incentives affect public employees’ intention to share knowledge. Tested incentives satisfy needs for either achievement or appreciation. Both treatments were tested on implicit as well as explicit knowledge sharing. A 2 × 3 factorial survey experiment was designed to observe within-person and between-person effects. Data were collected from public employees in the core administration and healthcare sector ( n = 623) in 2018. The analysis indicates that both treatments positively affect knowledge-sharing intention if it is explicit knowledge that ought to be shared. However, no effects of either treatment can be found in either type of knowledge sharing. No negative effect of the tested incentives on knowledge sharing was observed. Hence, incentives might not harm knowledge sharing but also do not pay off in organizational practice. In contrast to these motivation-enhancing human resource practices, ability and opportunity-enhancing practices should be tested to foster knowledge sharing.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Fischer

This study examines whether incentives affect public employees' intention to share knowledge. Tested incentives satisfy needs for either achievement or appreciation. Both treatments were tested on implicit as well as explicit knowledge sharing. A 2x3 factorial survey experiment was designed to observe within-person and between-person effects. Data were collected from public employees in the core administration and healthcare sector (n=623) in 2018. The analysis indicates that both treatments positively affect knowledge-sharing intention if it is explicit knowledge that ought to be shared. However, no effects of either treatment can be found in either type of knowledge sharing. No negative effect of the tested incentives on knowledge sharing was observed. Hence, incentives might not harm knowledge sharing but also do not pay off in organizational practice. In contrast to these motivation-enhancing human resource practices, ability and opportunity-enhancing practices should be tested to foster knowledge sharing.


Author(s):  
Frederik Godt Hansen

Abstract For decades, scholars have discussed how to build greater citizen trust in government. I hypothesize that to increase trust in government, we should consider whether decisions made in bureaucrat–citizen encounters (e.g. applications for welfare benefits) are favorable to citizens. Building on insights from social psychology, I argue that in cases where citizens are presented with unfavorable decisions (e.g. rejection of applications), public employees can mitigate the negative impact on trust in government by appearing warm and friendly in the decision-making process. The argument is tested in a large-scale randomized survey experiment on a representative sample of Danish citizens, where I manipulate decision favorability and warmth. The findings reveal that outcome favorability and warmth strongly influence citizens’ trust in government.


Methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Petzold ◽  
Tobias Wolbring

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.


Author(s):  
Zhuang Xiong ◽  
Pengju Wang ◽  
Chengxia Wu

AbstractInnovation failure knowledge sharing plays an important role in reducing the probability of repeated failure of subsequent innovation and improving innovation ability of virtual research organization. However, it is very difficult for members to actively share the innovation failure knowledge without incentives. To promote the sharing behavior of innovation failure knowledge in virtual research organization, by using game theory, considering the risk aversion degree of members and the negative effect of fault-tolerance environment, the incentive model of innovation failure knowledge sharing of virtual research organization was constructed, the incentive relationship of innovation failure knowledge sharing between organization and its members under the influence of different states was analyzed, and the theoretical model was simulated and verified through a case study from China. Results show that: (1) without considering the negative effect of fault-tolerant environment, the optimal incentive coefficient of innovation failure knowledge sharing is positively related to the shareable rate and the transformation ability of innovation failure knowledge of members, and negatively related to the sharing cost and risk aversion degree of members; (2) considering the negative effect of fault-tolerant environment, virtual research organization should make a corresponding modification of sharing incentive intensity according to the estimation of tolerance degree to fault-tolerant environment by itself and its members, so as to reduce the knowledge input of organization. The findings obtained from this study provide a novel idea and method for the design of incentive mechanism of innovation failure knowledge sharing of virtual research organization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-178
Author(s):  
Eric C.K. Cheng

Purpose The purpose of this paper is explore the relative effectiveness of people-based and information technology-based knowledge management (KM) strategies as implemented by principals in Hong Kong schools to facilitate and sustain Lesson Study for teachers’ knowledge sharing and internalization. Design/methodology/approach Data from 184 principals in Hong Kong were collected by a cross-sectional quantitative survey. Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability tests have been used to examine the constructed validity and reliability of the instrument. A structural equation model was applied to confirm the predictive effect of people-based and information technology-based KM strategies on teachers’ knowledge sharing and internalization through Lesson Study. Findings Results show that people-based KM strategy predicts knowledge sharing and internalization by and among teachers. However, while information technology-based knowledge management strategies predict teachers’ knowledge sharing, they do not predict how effectively they internalize knowledge. Practical implications Cultivating communities of practice, professional learning communities and mentoring schemes in schools can nurture a knowledge-sharing culture to facilitate and sustain Lesson Study for teacher learning. Institutionalizing an information technology system can help teachers to retrieve, share and store the school’s explicit knowledge. Originality/value The paper not only suggests school management strategies and practices for school leaders to facilitate and sustain Lesson Study, but also brings a new research dimension, KM, to the research area.


Field Methods ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip S. Brenner ◽  
Justine Bulgar-Medina

Many social identities (e.g., race, ethnicity) are measured using mark-all-that-apply (MATA) questions because they allow survey respondents to account for the multiple, nonexclusive ways in which they identify themselves. We test the use of MATA measures of sexual orientation and gender identity and compare them with forced choice (FC), an alternative format using a series of yes-or-no questions. Respondents, including an oversample of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) individuals, participated in a 2 × 3 factorial survey experiment. For the first factor, we hypothesize that respondents randomly assigned to FC will report a higher count of identities than those assigned to MATA. For the second factor, we hypothesize that increased topic salience will help LGBQ respondents in particular to overcome poor question design. Findings suggest that MATA and FC measure comparably when question writing best practices are followed, but topic salience can yield higher data quality when poorly formatted questions are used.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 659-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabina Haveric ◽  
Stefano Ronchi ◽  
Laura Cabeza

Research on the link between turnout and corruption has produced inconclusive evidence: while some studies find corruption to be positively related to turnout, others report a negative relationship. This article argues that the relevant question is not whether corruption has a positive or negative effect on turnout, but for whom. We hypothesize that the effect of corruption on the likelihood to vote depends on individuals’ employment sector. Public employees have different incentives to vote in corrupt settings since their jobs often depend on the political success of the government of the day. Hence, while corruption dampens turnout among ordinary citizens, public employees are more likely to vote in highly corrupt countries. Analysis of World Values Survey data from 44 countries, shows that the differential in voting propensity between public employees and other citizens gets larger as corruption increases, partially confirming our expectations.


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