Abstract
This research addresses the important question of how organizations can use financial incentives to influence the work tasks of their professional workforce-a constituency that is notoriously difficult to manage because of their specialized knowledge, considerable autonomy, strong socialization, and powerful professional norms. In particular, I explore how a baseline incentive effect is moderated by two features of professionals' tasks and jurisdictions: jurisdictional dominance (i.e., how much the profession controls the provision of the task relative to other professions) and jurisdictional prominence (i.e., how commonly provided the task is within a profession relative to other tasks). Using data on thousands of physician tasks from Ontario, Canada, and a difference-in-differences empirical design, I find that professionals' incentive responses are smaller when a profession has higher jurisdictional dominance over a task, but are larger when the task has higher jurisdictional prominence within the profession. This research contributes to the literature on professions and professionals in multiple ways. First, I introduce the concepts of jurisdictional dominance and jurisdictional prominence, distinguishing them from each other and from existing conceptions of professional control. Second, this study shows that financial incentives can be an effective tool for influencing professionals, but highlights that their efficacy is shaped by a task's jurisdictional dominance and jurisdictional prominence. Finally, I show that these new conceptions of jurisdictional control influence professionals' behaviors in meaningful ways and should therefore be considered in future studies of professions.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 887-908 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Journal | Organization Science |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2020 |
Funding
Funding was provided by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Award. This research benefited from the comments of Sarah Kaplan, Anita McGahan, Brian Golden, Nico Lacetera, Bill McEvily, Andrew von Nordenflycht, Andras Tilcsik, Willie Ocasio, Maryam Kouchaki, Klaus Weber, Hyejin Youn, Ned Smith, Brayden King, Julia DiBenigno, Carrie Oelberger, Curtis Chan, and Dylan Boynton; seminar participants at the Rotman School of Management, the Kellogg School of Management, the Booth School of Business, the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Wharton School, the Carlson School, the Desautels Faculty of Management, Goizueta Business School, and Harvard Business School; and participants at the INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition finalists conference, the Wharton People & Organizations Conference, and the Conference for Competitiveness and Cooperation (CCC). The author greatly appreciates the editorial guidance of Ruthanne Huising and the insightful comments from three anonymous reviewers. Parts of this material are based on data and information provided by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. However, the analyses, conclusions, opinions, and statements herein are those of the author and not those of the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Funding: Funding was provided by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Award. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2019.1334.
Keywords
- Financial incentives
- Healthcare
- Jurisdiction
- Occupations and professions
- Organizational control
- Professional control
- Professional services
- Work
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Strategy and Management
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
- Management of Technology and Innovation