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This paper aims to demonstrate that Facebook likes affect outcomes in nonprofit settings. Specifically, Facebook likes influence affinity to nonprofits, which, in turn, affects fundraising outcomes.

The authors report three studies that establish that relationship. To examine social contagion, Study 1 – an auction field study – relies on selling artwork created by underprivileged youth. To isolate signaling, Study 2 manipulates the number of total Facebook likes on a page. To isolate commitment escalation, Study 3 manipulates whether a participant clicks a Facebook like.

The results show that Facebook likes increase willingness to contribute in nonprofit settings and that the process goes through affinity, as well as through Facebook impressions and bidding intensity. The total number of Facebook likes has a direct signaling effect and an indirect social contagion effect.

The effectiveness of the proposed mechanisms is limited to nonprofit settings and only applies to short-term effects.

Facebook likes serve as both a quality signal and a commitment mechanism. The magnitude of commitment escalation is larger, and the relationship is moderated by familiarity with the organization. Managers should target Facebook likes at those less familiar with the organization and should prioritize getting a potential donor to leave a like as a step leading to donation, in essence mapping a donor journey from prospective to active, where Facebook likes play an essential role in the journey. In a charity auction setting, the donor journey involves an additional step of bidder intensity.

The approach the authors study is shown effective in nonprofit settings but does not appear to extend to corporate social responsibility more broadly.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first investigation to map Facebook likes to a seller’s journey through signals and commitment, as well as the only investigation to map Facebook likes to charity auctions and show the effectiveness of this in the field.

The purpose of this study is to determine how self-driven (intrinsic motivators) and monetary incentives (extrinsic motivators) are mediated by an effort to affect fundraising outcomes. This integration sheds light on crowding out between the two types of incentives as well the drivers of fundraising outcomes, specifically effort and donations.

A field experiment is conducted over a two-month period, involving an online fundraising campaign with over 300 volunteers assigned to one of five different incentive conditions. A special website was created to monitor fundraiser efforts. Fundraisers filled out pre- and post-study surveys.

While high monetary incentives result in the greatest immediate increase in funds raised, they crowd out future intentions to volunteer once incentives are withdrawn. Mediation analyzes show that fundraiser effort fully mediates the effect of intrinsic motivators and partially mediates the direct effect of extrinsic motivators on funds raised.

A major limitation of field experiments is the lack of control, resulting in higher variation. However, while a more controlled experiment will reduce this variation, this goes at the expense of lower external validity.

Results indicate that – at least in the short run – monetary incentives can result in higher fundraising outcomes. However, this goes at the expense of a reduction in future volunteering once the incentives are withdrawn.

This study examines whether extrinsic or intrinsic motivators have a greater impact on funds raised and whether extrinsic motivators crowd out future intentions to volunteer. Different from previous research in which effort is a latent variable, the effort is directly observed over time.

A self‐serving bias occurs when people subconsciously alter their perceptions about what is fair or right in a manner that serves their own interests. Perceptions of what constitutes “fair performance” may well vary according to one’s role in the employment relationship. While it is clear that employee satisfaction affects job performance, and that wage affects employee satisfaction, it is not only wage per se that determines morale, but also the perceived fairness of the received wage. Evidence from a laboratory experiment indicates these views differ significantly between participant “employers” and “employees.” We compare choices (hypothetical in the case of employers) for the amount of costly “effort” to provide in response to a wage that has been determined outside the employment relationship. In the field, managers must be aware of the relationship between fairness in compensation and employee morale, as well as their own biases regarding the fairness reference point.

We investigate the implications of the misalignment between manager and shareholder interests and the effects of initial ownership stakes and reinvestment of unpaid dividends on managerial self-dealing.

We collect and analyze data from controlled laboratory experiments with an experimental setting which captures the role of ownership in managerial considerations.

We see the emergence of both investor-aligned outcomes and managerial self-dealing outcomes. We find that increasing managers’ initial endowment of shares makes it harder for managers to coordinate on an outcome and lowers return on investment. Moreover, allowing managers to reinvest unpaid dividends results in a transfer of wealth to management.

The results and the conclusions are drawn upon data from the particular setting we investigate. Generalizing them beyond the specific setting should be done with caution.

Higher managerial ownership stake means that managers have a greater incentive to reward shareholders, but we find that it may also imply a more difficult coordination problem between managers – sometimes to the detriment of shareholders.

This study is the first to consider the direct relationship between managers’ portfolios and voting decisions regarding dividends and investment levels.

Companies incur immense losses due to employee neglect to save and back up data and failure to frequently update anti‐virus protections. This problem appears perplexing as such oversights are clearly neither in the organization’s nor in the employees’ best interest. We review the possible reasons for this phenomenon arising from studies of social dilemmas, unrealistic optimism, and reinforcement learning. We follow with three examples of “under‐saving” behavior. The results reveal that in all three cases computer users, novices and experts, feel that they do not save enough. This feeling is consistent with the reinforcement learning account. People think that they are less careful than they wish to be. The implications of this observation are discussed.