It’s not uncommon for firms to foster a culture of peer-to-peer recognition, often going as far as posting a leaderboard to further encourage this behavior. Alex Vandenberg, assistant professor of accounting, is a co-principal investigator on a study that examined how the method and metrics of the leaderboard actually influence behavior. In this episode of Research Reverb, Vandenberg discusses his research, which finds that ranking employees based on the number of times recognition was received decreased the proactive compliments, whereas ranking based on recognition given increased the behavior compared to when there was no leaderboard.
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