Peer Performance Feedback, Self-Enhancement, and Exploration  

   with Oliver Baumann and Daniel Newark

   (Experiment), Organization Sciene (2025)

We examine how providing decision makers with peer performance information influences their choices between exploration and exploitation over time. Previous work on organization-level learning suggests a high-performing peer would fuel exploration, while a low-performing peer would dampen it. However, underscoring the importance of studying individual-level behavior as building blocks of organization-level behavior, we provide experimental evidence that this basic dynamic is moderated by the extent to which decision makers interpret performance feedback in a self-enhancing way. More specifically, we present two principal findings. First, individuals who receive information about a high-performing peer explore more than those who receive information about a low-performing peer. Second, compared to individuals with a low tendency to self-enhance, individuals with a high tendency to self-enhance are less likely to explore when receiving information about a high-performing peer. In fact, these individuals explore at levels comparable to those who receive information about a low-performing peer. When these individual dynamics are aggregated, our data suggest that an organization that provides peer performance information will experience either the same or less exploration than an organization that does not, with the exact difference depending on the proportion of high self-enhancers within it. These insights into the contingencies and aggregate effects of how individual decision makers interpret and respond to peer performance information are particularly relevant given recent interest in designing less hierarchical organizations that shape employee behavior and innovation through the provision of feedback, rather than through traditional instruments of coordination and control such as incentives or monitoring.

 The Hot Kitchen Effect 

   with Gaël Le Mens and Thomas Woiczyk

   (Model and Experiment), Under Review at Management Science

We study the effect of misspecified mental representations on learning from  experience. We develop predictions based on a computational model and test these in two complementary behavioral experiments (N = 600). Our results reveal an asymmetry: under-specified mental representations (i.e., overly broad
categories) have more detrimental effects on exploration, learning, and performance than over-specified ones (i.e., overly narrow categories). We call this phenomenon the ‘Hot Kitchen Effect’, an extension of the widely studied ‘Hot Stove Effect’. While the Hot Stove Effect refers to the tendency to prematurely avoid previously experienced options that yielded poor outcomes, the Hot Kitchen Effect refers to the tendency to
avoid an entire category of alternatives after a negative experience with one member – leading to the premature abandonment of alternatives that were never tried. Underestimation of those never-experienced-before alternatives is unlikely to be corrected. In contrast, narrower (over-specified) mental representations restrict the scope of generalization and better preserve opportunities for correction.
We discuss the relevance of the Hot Kitchen Effect and how it can be moderated in contexts such as novelty, stigma, and stereotyping.

Presented at (excerpt):

• Strategic Management Society Conference 2020
• Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2020

• Society for Judgment and Decision Making Annual Meeting 2020

 Performance Misrepresentation and Exploration

   with Oliver Baumann, Dan Newark and Thorsten Wahle 

   - AOM Best Paper Proceedings, 2022, OMT Division - 

   (Experiment), Under Review at Strategic Management Journal

The performance information on which managers act is often not witnessed or verified by them directly, but is instead reported to them by lower-level members of the organization. Previous work has generally assumed that this reported information is objective and “innocent”. In this paper, we challenge this assumption and consider a setting where lower-level employees can exaggerate their performance. We conduct an experiment to examine how inflated performance information affects organizational exploration, finding that when subordinates can misrepresent performance, they are more likely to explore novel alternatives. However, whether organizations benefit from this exploration depends on how superiors manage misrepresentation. When higher-level managers monitor and penalize inaccurate reporting, misrepresentation decreases – but so does the exploration of novel alternatives.

Presented at (excerpt):

• Carnegie School of Organizational Learning Conference 2025
• Academy of Management 2022 (accepted)
• Experiments in Organization Science Seminar 2021

    Incentives, Attention, and Search

   with Stephan Billinger 

   (Experiment with Eye Tracking), Reject & Resubmit

   In this paper, we examine how different incentives designed to guide individual

   search shape attention and exploration. Incentives that organizations implement to

   guide search towards (or away from) (un)wanted solutions are likely to reduce the

   number of solutions considered, and may thereby hinder exploration. Using an eye-

   tracking experiment, we refine this intuition. We vary incentives that are positive or

   negative and affect the decision-maker or others. Our findings show that incentives

   affecting the decision-maker negatively, or others positively, lead to less exploration.     When these incentives are prevalent, paying more attention to performance   

   feedback is associated with less exploration. This finding proposes an attention-

   based mechanism that explains how different incentives shape exploration. We

   discuss implications for organizations that seek to pursue multiple goals or to

   operate with less-hierarchical structures.

Presented at (excerpt):

• Organization Science Winter Conference 2022
• DRUID Conference 2021
• Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2019