Mattia Fracchia (the Nova Schoolof Business and Economics): "Does Performance Evidence Motivate? A Field Experiment in Guinea-Bissau’s Health Sector".

Abstract:

This paper investigates how employees respond to evidence about their organization’s achievements in accomplishing its mission. In a randomized field experiment with the Ministry of Public Health of Guinea-Bissau, I provide front-line health workers with evidence of their program’s effectiveness in improving local health indicators. The intervention significantly enhanced healthcare service delivery performance, with treated workers providing 39 percent more healthcare time to recipients compared to the control group six months post-intervention. The intervention appears particularly effective in correcting inaccurate and over-optimistic prior beliefs about the status of health indicators. These results highlight the potential for organizations to employ mission achievement evidence to enhance workers’ performance.