An Experimental Investigation of Learning and Knowledge Sharing in Tournaments

Firms use tournament incentive schemes (competitions for limited rewards) to motivate employees. However, when a sustained skill and performance gap persists between the high and low performers, tournaments become less effective in motivating employees because high performers become complacent and low performers give up. Prior research suggests that learning and knowledge sharing are two behaviours that can improve employees' skills and performance. Learning enables employees to develop skills necessary for improving performance, while knowledge sharing enables employees to support others to develop those skills. This dissertation reports on two experimental studies I conducted to examine whether management control interventions can facilitate learning and knowledge sharing behaviour in tournaments. Study One examines the learning and performance effects of competitor process feedback (which allows tournament participants to learn from each other) and management’s emphasis on learning (which encourages tournament participants to learn while completing their tasks). Study One finds that the availability of competitor process feedback improves both learning and performance. Study One also finds that communicating management emphasis on learning during a tournament improves performance in the absence of competitor process feedback but reduces performance when competitor process feedback is made available. Tournament participants who receive both interventions attempt to learn simultaneously from their competitors as well as from their own experience, which makes learning more difficult and results in a decline in performance. Study Two investigates whether including a penalty in the tournament prize structure and providing the option to choose knowledge recipients encourage high performers to share knowledge that enables others to learn during tournaments. Study Two finds that high performers are more willing to share their knowledge in tournaments when a penalty is included in the tournament prize structure, and they have the option to choose the knowledge recipients. However, when there is no option to select the knowledge recipients, a penalty decreases high performers’ willingness to share knowledge. These results suggest that empathy-based concern about the welfare of low performers, along with concerns about losing their own competitive advantage, influence the high performers' knowledge sharing decisions in the presence of a penalty in the tournament prize structure.

Grantor dc:publisher

UNSW, Sydney

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Wasimi, Mohammad

• tournament
• learning
• knowledge sharing
• anzsrc-for: 350105 Management accounting

Statement dc:rights

• open access
• CC BY 4.0
• free_to_read

Licence

• https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/31394

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:unsworks.library.unsw.edu.au:1959.4/105485