Hi All.
A couple of weeks ago there was a discussion thread here and on OBTS-L
re: incentives (begun with a sigh by Jim Stoner, if I recall correctly).
There were lots of great responses to his original message that
articulated important design considerations for rewards/incentives
systems; however, most of them seemed to reflect individual rather than
published perspectives. Which leads me to the purpose of this post . .
.
First, a bit of background. Elizabeth Doherty and I have collected
data on individual responses to reward experiences. Specifically, we
asked folks to identify their most and least valued reward experiences,
as well as those experiences that made them most enthusiastic and most
distressed. We have data from well over 1000 people in three basic
categories: employees in social service org's, professionals in various
for-profit org's, and contingent workers. We have content analyzed the
data and have come up with some interesting similarities and differences
in the patterns of responses across the three groups. From a
theoretical perspective, there's nothing earth shattering in these
results, but we think our data could be very useful in bringing some of
the theoretical points that are often ignored in design and
implementation (e.g., the importance of individual differences) to life
in very vivid ways.
Now to my questions. First, many of the comments posted recently on
incentives have been corroborated by our data. But, what we have never
been able to find is anything comparable to what we have done that
really illustrates why some of these various design and implementation
points are so critical. If anyone has any references they could share,
Elizabeth and I would really appreciate it. Second, I'd like to get
some idea of how many people might find an article with our results
useful. We would specifically like to target instructors and/or
textbook authors who would like to use easily accessible information in
their grad/undergrad classes to help drive home some of the points that
often get missed.
I hope my message and requests make sense. I have tried to keep things
brief, which means that I may have missed some critical details. If
you'd like more clarification regarding our research and my questions,
please contact me offline at
cshunt@niu.edu. Actually, I guess it would
be best if all responses were sent to me offline so as not to clog up
others' mailboxes unnecessarily. If I collect some good article
references, I'd be happy to summarize them for the group and post them
for all to see.
Thanks a bunch.
Courtney Hunt