Good Colleagues of the HR Division,
I want to draw your attention to three teaching resources that may be of interest to those that cover compensation and incentive plans in their grad/undergrad courses.
When teaching content on incentive plan design, I make a point of emphasizing the serious problem of employees "gaming" their incentive plans – i.e., taking actions that maximize their private benefits at the expense of organizational goals. Realizing there was very little academic or practitioner research on incentive "gaming" behavior, I collaborated on a research project with two thought leaders in the sales compensation space to write an article for Harvard Business Review. The article just came out this week. The focus is on the problem of incentive gaming in sales incentive plans; the takeaways are useful for all types of plans.
https://hbr.org/2025/03/how-salespeople-game-the-system
To prime the discussion before class, I ask the students to conduct an interview with a friend or family member working under a pay-for-performance plan and ask them about how they and their co-workers game the plan. The interviews and class discussion are eye-opening for everyone. The assignment instructions can be downloaded from the link below:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OqO6PMfIxC3IFiTX83f78lOxVs2xdqsD/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=118215688435678667540&rtpof=true&sd=true
Lastly, I put together a few slides and a funny video clip you can use to introduce the topic of incentive gaming. This can be downloaded from the link below:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ay72E4KjKb12CNR47snhlwER7O7yB4lo/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=118215688435678667540&rtpof=true&sd=true
Best,
Tim Gardner
Tim Gardner PhD
Huntsman School of Business
Utah State University
3555 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322
tim.gardner@usu.edu
http://tinyurl.com/ycc5po2f