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Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control. Evidence from Hospital Hand Washing

By: Susanna Gallani
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Abstract

Managers often face the challenge to elicit cooperation toward performance goals from workers external to their span of control. In this study, I examine the effectiveness of conduit incentives—an incentive design in which the manager rewards her subordinates for performance that requires the cooperation of outsiders. Motivated by the monetary award, bonus-eligible subordinates use social pressure to elicit cooperation from the outsiders. I explore a setting in which a California hospital introduced a one-time bonus program to improve hand hygiene compliance. State regulation prevented physicians’ eligibility to receive bonus payments. Because physicians’ hand hygiene compliance would count toward collective performance, bonus-eligible workers developed spontaneous social pressure practices leveraging on physicians’ image motivation and drove physicians’ contribution to the collective performance absent any direct monetary reward. Physicians’ performance persisted beyond the removal of the incentives. This is the first study to address the effectiveness and persistence effects of conduit incentives.

Keywords

Organizational Behavior Modification; Peer Monitoring; Persistence Of Performance Improvements; Crowding Out; Implicit Incentives; Compensation; Healthcare; Social Pressure; Image Motivation; Incentives; Motivation; Performance; Behavior; Motivation and Incentives; Compensation and Benefits; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Organizational Culture; Health Industry; California

Citation

Gallani, Susanna. "Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control. Evidence from Hospital Hand Washing." Accounting Review (forthcoming).

About The Author

Susanna Gallani

Accounting and Management
→More Publications

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    The Effects of Electronic Medical Records on Hospital Utilization Costs

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    Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control. Evidence from Hospital Hand Washing

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    Variance Analysis: New Insights from Health Care Applications

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More from the Author
  • The Effects of Electronic Medical Records on Hospital Utilization Costs By: Susanna Gallani, Luminita Enache, Xue Guo and Eddie Riedl
  • Conduit Incentives: Eliciting Cooperation from Workers Outside of Managers' Control. Evidence from Hospital Hand Washing By: Susanna Gallani
  • Variance Analysis: New Insights from Health Care Applications By: Robert S. Kaplan and Susanna Gallani
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