Ian I. Larkin
There are 5 articles for this faculty member.
About Faculty in this Article:
Ian I. Larkin is an assistant professor in the Negotiation, Organizations and Markets unit at Harvard Business School.
It's Alive! Business Scholars Turn to Experimental Research
| Published: | December 5, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 4 Comments posted |
Business researchers are turning increasingly to experiments in the lab and field to unlock the secrets of what motivates CEOs, consumers, and policymakers.
The Most Powerful Workplace Motivator
| Published: | October 31, 2011 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
| Forum: | open for comment; 33 Comments posted |
When evaluating compensation issues, economists often assume that both an employer and an employee make rational, albeit self-interested choices while working toward a goal. The problem, says Assistant Professor Ian Larkin, is that the most powerful workplace motivator is our natural tendency to measure our own performance against the performance of others.
Published in 2010
The Psychological Costs of Pay-for-Performance: Implications for Strategic Compensation
| Authors: | Ian Larkin, Lamar Pierce, and Francesca Gino |
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| Published: | December 28, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In studying pay-for-performance-based compensation systems, economic scholars often adhere to agency theory, which hypothesizes that firms should prominently use performance-based compensation—it alleviates the problems of employee "shirking" and ensures highly skilled employees' desire to work for the company. However, firms use performance-based pay far less frequently than agency theory predicts. This paper posits that the psychological costs of pay-for-performance systems often dominate their benefits to firms, and proposes an integrated theory of strategic compensation that takes into account the economic and psychological benefits and costs of pay-for-performance. Research was conducted by Harvard Business School professors Francesca Gino and Ian Larkin, and Lamar Pierce of Washington University.
Why Do Firms Use Non-Linear Incentive Schemes? Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Overconfidence
| Authors: | Ian Larkin and Stephen Leider |
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| Published: | April 21, 2010 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2010 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The use of "non-linear" performance-based incentive contracts is very common in many business environments. The most well-known example is salesperson compensation, though many other types of performance-based pay, including stock options, bonus systems based on defined metrics, and pay based on subjective performance, often exhibit non-linear characteristics. Research has demonstrated that non-linear incentives are highly distortionary because employees manipulate their work in order to maximize their pay. While some scholars have recommended that companies stop using non-linear incentives, little research has been done to investigate the possible benefits of non-linear schemes. In this paper, HBS professor Ian Larkin and Ross School of Business professor Stephen Leider (HBS PhD '09) explore the role that the behavioral bias of overconfidence may play in explaining the prevalence of non-linear incentive schemes. They conclude that the linearity or non-linearity of an incentive system could play an important role in sorting employees according to their level of confidence; in addition, there may be three possible benefits to having overconfident employees.
Published in 2009
Demographics, Career Concerns or Social Comparison: Who Games SSRN Download Counts?
| Authors: | Benjamin G. Edelman and Ian I. Larkin |
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| Published: | March 25, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | February 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Why do certain individuals commit fraudulent acts—in this case repeatedly downloading their own working papers from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) repository to increase the papers' reported download counts? HBS professors Benjamin G. Edelman and Ian I. Larkin study the relative importance of demographic, economic, and psychological factors leading individuals to commit this kind of gaming. Authors engage in deceptive self-downloading to improve a paper's visibility on SSRN, to obtain more favorable assessments of paper quality, and to obtain possible benefits for promotion and tenure decisions at those schools that consider download counts in tenure decisions. Data indicates that authors are more likely to inflate their papers' download counts when a higher count greatly improves the visibility of a paper on the SSRN network. Authors are also more likely to inflate their papers' download counts when their peers recently had successful papers—suggesting an "envy" effect in download gaming. Download inflations are also affected somewhat by career concerns (e.g. just before changing jobs) and by demographic factors, though these effects are smaller. On the whole, analysis suggests a heightened risk of fraudulent acts not only where economic returns are high, but also where prestige, status, or reputation are important.
