Organizations are increasingly utilizing remote monitoring tools that can track the total time telecommuting employees spend on work activities. We examine whether and how this information can eliminate a specific gender-based bias in the performance evaluations of telecommuting parents. Specifically, managers tend to evaluate telecommuting mothers less favorably than telecommuting fathers when performance outcomes are unfavorable, due to biased effort attribution. The availability of total work-time information can effectively eliminate this bias. Results from our main experiment and four supplemental experiments support our predictions and provide process-level evidence for our theory. Our theory and results suggest that leveraging remote monitoring tools' capacity to track employees' total work time can enhance the fairness and effectiveness of performance evaluations for telecommuting mothers.

ABSTRACT Toward the goal of reconciling conflicting arguments on whether performance-based incentives facilitate or impede divergent thinking, we identify a feature common to prior demonstrations of negative incentive effects: they generally involve tasks with only one correct solution. Our first experiment replicates a negative incentive effect when insight problems require “bottom-up” divergent thinking from an unexpected resource to the problem it is uniquely equipped to solve, whereas our second experiment finds a positive incentive effect in the more general case of problems that enable “top-down” divergent thinking from a problem to multiple potential solutions. We also observe a positive incentive effect in a third experiment that measures the time needed to generate a solution to problems that have multiple potential solutions and in a fourth experiment in which participants design insight problems. Overall, our findings suggest that any harmful effects of performance-based incentives are likely restricted to highly constrained settings. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors upon request. JEL Classifications: J33; M14; M41; M52.

ABSTRACTWe design three experiments to examine how group incentives moderate the motivational effects of cash versus tangible rewards. Our first experiment shows that, relative to individual incentives, group incentives can magnify any negative effect of the uncertain attractiveness of a less‐fungible tangible reward (versus cash), as group members must evaluate not only how attractive they find the reward themselves but also how attractive other group members are likely to find it. However, as we show in our second experiment, under group incentives, structuring a tangible reward as a shared experience among group members who like each other can mitigate any demotivating effect of an individually consumed tangible reward vis‐à‐vis a cash reward. A third experiment provides process support for our theory, showing that both the attractiveness of the reward and the degree of certainty that others will also find it attractive jointly and fully mediate our findings. As a whole, our study furthers an understanding of the multifaceted dimensions of tangible rewards, identifying incremental effects that can arise when tangible rewards are combined with group incentives.

Prior research suggests that evaluators more favorably evaluate creative output produced by designers with high expertise relative to designers with low expertise, irrespective of the actual creativity of their output (hereafter, the expertise bias). We conduct multiple experiments to examine how knowledge about Artificial Intelligence (AI)’s capabilities to augment the creative design process affects the expertise bias. We find that providing this knowledge reduces the perceived exclusivity of designer domain expertise, the judgment theorized to underlie the expertise bias, and mitigates the expertise bias in subjective evaluations of creative output. However, when evaluators have knowledge about AI’s capabilities, designers can reassert the perceived exclusivity of their domain expertise by refusing to utilize available AI systems during the design process, which exacerbates the expertise bias. While prior research focuses on AI’s ability to enhance creative design, we highlight that AI-augmented design can further enhance the creative process by mitigating a prevalent human bias in the subjective evaluation of creative output. We also contribute to a better understanding of evidence suggesting that some highly experienced designers refuse to utilize AI in their creative designs.

ABSTRACTThis paper reports the results of multiple studies that together provide converging evidence in support of the theory that gender stereotypes bias employee selection during group recruiting events. Specifically, we predict and find that female (male) job candidates who exhibit stereotypically male behaviors receive lower (higher) evaluations during group recruiting events, particularly among male recruiters. Prior research suggests gender stereotypes do not bias employee selection during one‐on‐one interviews. However, our results suggest that evaluating job candidates in the more social context of group events can have important unintended consequences on employee selection, a key component of the accounting control environment. Given the importance of group recruiting events to inform hiring decisions across organizations such as investment banks and public accounting firms, our results contribute to a better understanding of survey and field evidence suggesting that entry‐level male and female employees have different personalities at these organizations, which appear to influence their career trajectories.

We examine whether knowledge sharing can enhance the efficacy of implicit, trust-based incentives. Using a stark laboratory experiment, we find support for theory suggesting that individuals believe that their knowledge is an important part of their identity, making it costly to share, but facilitating greater trust that recipients of this knowledge will reciprocate with future rewards. Utilizing participants with substantial work experience, results from additional scenario-based experiments demonstrate practical implications of this theory. Collectively, the results from our experiments show that individuals help others less when the help conveys personal knowledge relative to when it does not absent the prospect of rewards, but more when they can expect future rewards (i.e., with implicit incentives). Importantly, knowledge sharing increases the efficacy of implicit incentives more when they are determined by the help recipient relative to someone else (e.g., a supervisor). Collectively, we contribute to a better understanding of incentive systems designed to promote knowledge sharing in practice.

Although divergent thinking generates multiple unconventional approaches to a problem or challenge, claims from prior experimental studies that incentives hinder divergent thinking often involve problems that have only one solution. In our first experiment, we replicate the negative effect of performance-based incentives in such settings, finding that participants solve fewer insight problems under performance-based pay than under fixed pay. But in a second experiment in which we modify these same problems to allow more than one unconventional solution, participants with performance-based pay identify significantly more divergent solutions than do their fixed-pay counterparts. We also find evidence that incentives stimulate increased divergent thinking in a third experiment in which participants design rather than solve insight problems. Overall, our findings suggest that the negative effect of performance-contingent incentives in some settings is more a reflection of the overly restrictive nature of these settings than the failure of incentives to stimulate divergent thinking.

ABSTRACT In two experiments, we examine whether performance-contingent incentives facilitate the creative process by enhancing the initial preparation that precedes creative incubation. The defining characteristic of both experiments is a second-stage task that is separated in time from the first-stage implementation of different incentive schemes. In Experiment 1, the second stage takes place ten days after we implement conditions with quantity incentives, high-creativity incentives, incentives with a minimum-creativity threshold, and a fixed-pay control condition. In Experiment 2, we test the effects of incentives with an incubation period of 20 minutes, during which an experimenter escorts participants on a walk between compensated work periods. In both experiments, we find that participants with quantity incentives outperform the high-creativity production of their fixed-pay counterparts only in the second-stage task. Mediation analyses suggest that quantity-incentivized participants' propensity to try more divergent ideas in the first stage sparks their creativity advantage in the second stage. JEL Classifications: D24; D91; M11; M41.

ABSTRACT In an environment where employees have the freedom to direct some time away from their day-to-day routine tasks to work on creative endeavors, we examine whether nonbinding targets for the amount of time to spend (input target) and/or the amount of output to produce (output target) on the routine task affects creative task performance. Results of a laboratory experiment demonstrate that providing both an input and an output target on the routine task leads to greater creative task performance relative to providing one or none of these targets. This result is consistent with theory suggesting that individuals need guidance as to how much routine work to complete in order to achieve the cognitive closure necessary for them to think creatively. However, individuals also need guidance that encourages them to limit time on their relatively comfortable routine work and spend time on more open-ended creative endeavors. By setting expectations as to what employees need to achieve on their more routine day-to-day responsibilities, organizations can increase the efficacy of the growing practice of allowing employees to spend a portion of their work week on creative endeavors. Data Availability: Contact the authors.

More recently, we applied the DPC technique to measure electrical field in a range of specimens such as in-situ biased silicon pn-junctions, CMOS devices and IIIV based specimens [5].In this presentation we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using DPC on nanoscaled materials when compared to more established techniques such as off-axis electron holography.

We find that the effectiveness of piece-rate compensation relative to fixed pay in a laboratory letter-search task hinges on the presence or absence of a nonbinding statement to participants that the experimenter values correct responses. In the absence of the value statement, participants with piece-rate rewards for correct responses generate more correct and incorrect responses than do their counterparts with fixed pay, correcting errors as they go along to maximize compensation. Essentially, piece-rate compensation acts as an output control, incentivizing participants to maximize correct responses through a "produce-and-improve" strategy. The value statement suppresses this strategy because participants appear to perceive it as an input constraint, prompting greater initial care at the expense of lower overall productivity. As a result, the value statement eliminates the gains in correct responses that piece-rate incentivized participants otherwise realize. Thus, in settings in which individuals can gain efficiency by working expeditiously and improving quality when necessary, our results suggest the possibility that organizations could be better off just letting incentive schemes operate, rather than emphasizing quality in ways that could overly constrain productivity.

We investigate a potential selection benefit of stock-based compensation for rank-and-file employees, whose pay under this compensation form is insensitive to their individual efforts. Using a laboratory experiment, where we control for both the timing and expected magnitude of compensation, we demonstrate that individuals with higher levels of dispositional optimism are more likely to choose compensation contingent on a company’s future stock price over a fixed salary, even after controlling for the individual’s risk tolerance. Furthermore, individuals who select stock-based compensation also perform better when confronted with a challenging problem-solving task, as compared to those selecting a fixed salary. As expected, dispositional optimism mediates this performance effect, consistent with theory suggesting that optimists believe more strongly that their efforts will generate high productivity motivating them to work harder on a task. In addition to contributing to a better understanding of the puzzling prevalence of stock-based compensation plans at the rank-and-file level, our results also offer testable empirical implications.

Recent catastrophic bushfires in Victoria, Australia have prompted examination of the risk of bushfire ignition from uninsulated powerlines. Policy and community debate has ensued over balancing electricity supply as an essential service with the risk of bushfires initiated by powerlines. The 2009 Black Saturday fires prompted debate and analysis resulting in public investments in undergrounding and insulating powerlines as well as deploying network protection devices that reduce ignition probability. This Study examines the technical and economic feasibility of deploying grid-interactive solar photovoltaic and energy storage systems on rural homes to allow powerlines to be disconnected on days of high fire risk to prevent bushfire ignition. Using studies of conditions during fire risk periods, solar photovoltaic yield models and bushfire ignition mechanisms, it concludes that PV systems coupled with energy storage can provide cost effective bushfire risk reduction benefits. Based on comparison with powerline undergrounding, it concludes that solar photovoltaics and storage could achieve the same risk reduction at 10% of the Net Present Cost. This approach is transferrable to other fire-prone regions such as New South Wales, South Australia and Southern California. The use of Bayesian belief networks is proposed as a decision support system for powerline risk management during high fire danger periods.

ABSTRACT We examine how reciprocity affects the relation between performance target levels and effort across single- and repeated-interaction settings. Using a laboratory experiment where participants make choices from a payoff matrix representing target and effort levels, we model a setting where employee-participants have economic incentives to respond to higher target assignments by superior-participants with higher effort. However, reciprocity could lead employees to reward low target assignments with high effort and punish high target assignments with low effort. In a single-interaction setting where only innate preferences can drive reciprocal behavior, we find that superiors select higher targets and that employees generally respond with higher effort. In a repeated-interaction setting where reciprocal behavior can emerge for strategic reasons, we find that superiors set lower targets and that employees generally respond to low targets with high effort and to high targets with low effort. Collectively, our results suggest that reciprocity plays a limited role in affecting target and effort levels in a single-interaction setting. Rather, reciprocity appears to emerge for more strategic reasons brought on by repeated interactions. As most work relationships extend over multiple periods, our results may help explain why organizations tend to set readily achievable performance targets.

We examine the effects of performance-based compensation incentives on high-creativity production at two points in time: (1) a first-stage experiment during which the incentive manipulation is implemented, and (2) a follow-up second-stage event ten days after the removal of the first-stage incentives. We find that experimental participants receiving quantity-based pay for their first-stage production generate more high-creativity ideas in the second stage than do participants receiving fixed pay, even though we observe no compensationbased difference in high-creativity production in the first-stage experiment itself. These findings support the premise that, although incentives may have no immediate beneficial effect on creativity, those operating under performance-based incentives nevertheless achieve more progress on the task, thus helping them to sustain long-term creativity. Our results provide a possible explanation for the popularity of performance-based incentives even in creativitydependent firms.

We examine whether knowledge sharing can enhance the efficacy of implicit, trust-based incentives. Using a stark laboratory experiment, we find support for theory suggesting that individuals believe that their knowledge is an important part of their identity, making it costly to share, but facilitating greater trust that recipients of this knowledge will reciprocate with future rewards. Utilizing participants with substantial work experience, results from additional scenario-based experiments demonstrate practical implications of this theory. Collectively, the results from our experiments show that individuals help others less when the help conveys personal knowledge relative to when it does not absent the prospect of rewards, but more when they can expect future rewards (i.e., with implicit incentives). Importantly, knowledge sharing only increases the efficacy of implicit incentives when they are determined by the help recipient. With this paper, we contribute to a better understanding of incentive systems designed to promote knowledge sharing in practice.

ABSTRACT Risk-based auditing implies that auditors invest more (fewer) resources as reporting risks increase (decrease). We find from an interactive experiment that participants in an audit-like role reflect this reasoning to a lesser extent when risks arise from intentional actions of human reporters than when the same risks arise from an unintentional source. We interpret this pattern as reflecting an emotive “valuation by feeling” when risks arise from human intent, meaning that the presence of risk is more influential than the magnitude of risk, whereas unintentional risks reflect a “valuation by calculation” that conditions audit resources on risk magnitudes. Because our experiment constrains intentional and unintentional risks to have equivalent magnitudes, probabilities, and consequences, these results could seem irrational in a strict economic sense. Outside the laboratory, however, reporters can strategically increase the level of intent-based risk in response to the auditor's low-risk strategy, such that an audit strategy that is relatively insensitive to the level of intent-based risk would be less vulnerable to strategic exploitation.