I research extrinsic motivators (pay, incentives, non-monetary rewards, recognition, goals and feedback) and their influence on attitudes, behaviors and performance, with specific attention to the underlying psychological and cognitive processes.  I'm currently exploring this from two related perspectives... 


The influence of incentives and feedback on direction and persistence of effort

Goal orientation and feedback congruence
How performance feedback interacts with individual goal orientation to influence discretionary effort  and achievement. 

Incentive alignment with managerial objectives 
Determining optimal incentive design to encourage managerial effort across complementary and substitutable objectives. 

Performance pay and performance feedback as precursors to work stress
Empirical test of performance pay and feedback as antecedents to work stress and identification of the paths through which they ultimately predict employee withdrawal of effort.

Magnitude and probability of payoff as predictors of innovation    
Examining innovation as a managerial effort choice in response to potential payoff. 


How, when and why equity is important in the distribution of rewards

Attitudes toward employee benefits allocated based on need
Factors that influence employee acceptance of inequitable benefit allocation, such as religious accommodation.

Individual factors that influence perception of reward policy fairness
The interactive role of equity sensitivity, self-uncertainty and self-interest in determining attitudes towards inequitable reward policies.

The importance of distribution rules for work teams
The importance of equity-based reward distributions to team members and how this changes over time as trust evolves.

The triggers of equity concerns 
Identification of conditions that systematically prompt individuals to evaluate the equity of their reward. 

A cross-cultural investigation of contingent reward expectations 
The role of national and professional culture in construal of reward equity. 

kkm@kkmerriman.com
PO Box 456 Ambler PA 19002
215.237.6686