Social Comparison and Impression Management: The Joint Effect of RPI and Supervisor Presence On Employee Performance

My dissertation consists of three chapters. In Chapter 1.0, I first establish the structure of my dissertation. I then provide a brief introduction to the relative performance information literature (RPI) and its importance to both practice and research. I specifically describe how my dissertation answers a call for research regarding the effect of providing employees with RPI in the presence of a supervisor. In Chapter 2.0, I provide a focused review of the academic literature regarding RPI. I first describe what RPI is and then describe the predictions that the traditional economic literature and behavioral literature would make regarding how providing RPI to employees should affect employee performance. I then describe previous studies that have analyzed RPI’s effect on employee performance under both tournament and non-tournament contracts and other moderating variables. Many of these studies analyze settings where either a supervisor is not present or the role of a supervisor is deemphasized. I identify this as an important research area and outline how my dissertation contributes to the RPI literature. In Chapter 3.0, I provide evidence that the traditional positive effect on employee performance of providing employees with RPI is decreased when a supervisor is present. Using an experiment, I manipulate whether employees receive RPI and whether a supervisor is present in the experimental setting. I first replicate previous research by providing evidence of a positive effect of RPI on employee performance when no supervisor is present. Second, I provide evidence that when employees do not receive RPI, the presence of a supervisor increases employee performance. Third, I fail to find an effect of RPI on employee performance when a supervisor is present. Thus, I provide evidence that providing RPI to employees may not effectively motivate employees to increase their performance when the presence of a supervisor is salient