How Organizational Hierarchy can Hinder Worker Collaboration

Assistant Professor Jana Gallus at UCLA Anderson and Harvard’s Olivia S. Jung and Karim R. Lakhani tested to see whether the prospect of public recognition would encourage more workers to take part in internal crowdsourcing programs. And if it does work, does the kind of recognition matter?

Using a field experiment at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, they found that recognition matters very much. In fact, it increases the employees’ willingness to participate — but only if it comes from their manager.