The Award Goes To… Someone Else: A Natural Quasi-Experiment Examining the Impact of Performance Awards on Nominees’ Workplace Collaboration

Employee awards programs are prevalent in organizations. This research examines a group of employees who have received relatively less attention in the employee awards literature—those who are nominated for but fail to receive an award. Integrating social comparison theory with the functional theory of counterfactual thinking, we argue that non-winner nominees go through complex motivational states and affective experiences, which influence their collaboration responsiveness to colleagues. We conducted a quasi-experimental field study using collaboration records over 8 months (Study 1) and a multi-source study using survey data and collaborative records over 2 months (Study 2). The results revealed that compared to non-nominees, non-winner nominees have lower collaboration responsiveness to winners following the award announcement, especially when they have a higher structural proximity to winners. However, in the long run, non-winner nominees have higher collaboration responsiveness to others in general. In addition, we found that being nominated for but failing to receive an award simultaneously induces non-winner nominees to experience higher causal-inference counterfactual thinking and negative affect, which exerts opposing impacts on non-winner nominees’ collaboration responsiveness. This research advances the understanding of the impact, influencing mechanisms, boundary conditions, and temporal dynamics of employee awards on workplace collaboration.