Too Much of a Good Thing? The Effect of Public RPI and Public Goals on Performance

• In Event: Goal Setting

Abstract

Recent studies on relative performance information (RPI) find publicizing RPI may not always be beneficial, suggesting a need to better understand when the benefits of publicizing RPI are more or less likely to materialize. Using an experiment, we examine whether publicizing RPI increases performance in a setting in which employees set their own goals. Consistent with prior research, we find publicizing RPI increases social comparison engagement, but greater social comparison engagement leads employees to set easier goals, which lowers performance. Importantly, we also find publicizing employees’ self-set goals can attenuate the effects of publicizing RPI on social comparison engagement. Thus, not only do our results point to a boundary condition regarding the benefits of publicizing RPI, but they also suggest publicizing both RPI and self-set goals may just be “too much of a good thing.”

Authors

• Seung Kyo Ahn, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Jongwoon Choi, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Dimitri Yatsenko, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater