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The role of target difficulty and career tournaments in retaining creative R&D employees
We explore the turnover intentions of creative R&D employees and the role of performance management practices in shaping these considerations. Since the success of a firm's R&D efforts hinges on the innovative ideas of its employees, it is crucial to retain particularly creative individ...
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Published in: | Contemporary accounting research 2024, Vol.41 (2), p.1058-1088 |
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Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | We explore the turnover intentions of creative R&D employees and the role of performance management practices in shaping these considerations. Since the success of a firm's R&D efforts hinges on the innovative ideas of its employees, it is crucial to retain particularly creative individuals. At the same time, however, we argue that this is especially difficult because both the higher outside options of creative employees and their specific individual characteristics make them, on average, more likely to leave their company. Most importantly, we suggest that two widely studied performance management design choices (target difficulty and career tournaments) typically used to motivate effort may influence the loss of creative talent. Using survey data from our unique access to R&D employees of a large manufacturing firm and a complementary experiment among business students, we find evidence that creative employees are, on average, more likely to leave their firm. Consistent with creative employees possessing a stronger learning orientation, we also predict and find that this tendency to leave is mitigated by target difficulty (as difficult targets speak to creative individuals' learning orientation) and exacerbated by the intensity of career tournaments (as they reduce team cohesion and, ultimately, undermine learning opportunities).
Résumé
Le rôle de la difficulté d’accès de l’objectif et des compétitions en entreprise dans la rétention des employés créatifs en R&D
Les auteurs étudient les intentions des employés créatifs affectés à la R&D de quitter l’entreprise et le rôle des pratiques de gestion des performances dans l’élaboration de ces réflexions. Le succès des efforts de R&D d’une entreprise reposant sur les idées novatrices de ses employés, il est crucial de retenir les personnes particulièrement créatives. Toutefois, les auteurs avancent que cela est difficile parce que l’éventail d’options offertes à l’externe aux employés créatifs et leurs caractéristiques individuelles spécifiques les rendent, en moyenne, plus susceptibles de quitter leur entreprise. Avant tout, ils suggèrent que deux choix de conception largement étudiés en matière de gestion des performances (la difficulté d’accès de l’objectif et les compétitions en entreprise), souvent utilisés pour inciter à l’effort, peuvent influencer la perte de talents créatifs. À l’aide de données d’enquêtes recueillies de manière exclusive auprès des employés de R&D d’une grande entreprise manufacturiè |
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ISSN: | 0823-9150 1911-3846 |
DOI: | 10.1111/1911-3846.12931 |