Dr. Marco Kleine

Mickeler, Maren; Khashabi, Pooyan; Kleine, Marco; Kretschmer, Tobias (2023). Knowledge Seeking and Anonymity in Digital Work Settings, Strategic Management Journal, 44 (10), 2413-2442. DOI

• Employees often need knowledge from colleagues to complete tasks successfully. With distributed and remote work becoming more common, organizations increasingly rely on digital technologies, such as organizational platforms, to support members' knowledge exchange. We study factors that hinder employees from seeking knowledge from others on such platforms. We argue that individuals' seeking decisions depend on expected social-psychological costs and economic considerations and posit that both can be muted by anonymizing seekers. In two experiments, we test our conjectures and find that both types of expected costs reduce knowledge seeking. Social-psychological costs decrease individuals' knowledge seeking, while adding economic costs further reduces seeking. Moreover, in digital settings, female knowledge seekers are more sensitive to their identity being known than males and thus benefit more from anonymity.

Kleine, Marco; Heite, Jonas; Rosendahl Huber, Laura (2022). Subsidized R&D Collaboration: The Causal Effect of Innovation Vouchers on Innovation Outcomes, Research Policy, 51 (6). DOI

• We study the causal effect of subsidized R&D collaboration on external collaborations and innovation outcomes of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In particular, we make use of a randomized controlled trial to analyze the effect of a nationwide innovation voucher scheme in the United Kingdom that grants SMEs across all industries financial support of up to 5,000 GBP for engaging the services of experts, e.g., from universities, research institutes or IP advisors, when pursuing an innovation-related project. Our results show that the innovation voucher program has an immediate, short-term impact on the execution of these innovation projects with positive effects on product and service development, internal processes, and intellectual property protection. However, we also observe that these results fade out quite quickly, i.e., two years after the intervention many effects caused by the innovation voucher program have disappeared. Based on our results, we also provide some practical guidance to further improve the effectiveness of voucher programs.
• Also published in: Academy of Management Proceedings Vol. 2020, No. 1
• Also published as: Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 20-11

Heite, Jonas; Rosendahl Huber, Laura; Kleine, Marco (2020). Subsidized R&D Collaboration: The Effect of Innovation Vouchers on Innovation Activity & Performance, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2020 (1), 2020 (1)7665abstract. DOI

• We study the causal effect of subsidized R&D collaboration on innovation performance. In particular, we make use of a randomized controlled trial to analyze the effect of an innovation voucher scheme in the United Kingdom that grants small and medium-sized enterprises financial support of up to 5,000 GBP for engaging the services of experts, e.g., from universities, research institutes or IP advisors, when pursuing an innovation-related project. Our findings provide evidence that the innovation voucher program successfully accelerates the execution of R&D projects with short-term effects on innovation outcomes. We find that being awarded a voucher has a positive short-term impact on product development for firms that collaborated with a university. In addition, we find a positive effect on the number of patent applications for firms indicating to be in need for specialist IP knowledge. In terms of collaboration outcomes, we can show that subsidized university-industry collaborations result in an increase of joint ventures two years after the voucher has been awarded."
• Also published as: Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 20-11
• Also published in: Research Policy Volume 51, Issue 6, July 2022, 104515

Kleine, Marco; Langenbach, Pascal; Zhurakhovska, Lilia (2017). How Voice Shapes Reactions to Impartial Decision-makers: An Experiment on Participation Procedures, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 143, 241-253. DOI

• This paper studies how participation in decision procedures affects people’s reactions to the deciding authority. In our economic experiment, having voice, i.e., the opportunity to state one’s opinion prior to a decision, significantly increases subordinates’ subsequent kindness towards the authority. These positive effects occur irrespectively of the decisions’ content. The experimental findings stress the positive effects of voice when subordinates and authorities interact. Our results suggest that in organizations, but also in the legal and political arena, participative decision-making can be used to guide people’s actions after decisions have been made.
• Also published at SSRN as: MPI Collective Goods Preprint, No. 2013/11

Kleine, Marco; Langenbach, Pascal; Zhurakhovska, Lilia (2016). Fairness and Persuasion: How Stakeholder Communication Affects Impartial Decision Making, Economics Letters, 141, 173-176. DOI

• We study experimentally to what extent distributive fairness decisions by impartial authorities are influenced by stakeholders’ fairness opinions. In a three-player allocation game, we compare Communication treatments, in which one of the stakeholders states her opinion prior to the allocation decision, to a Baseline without communication. We find that stakeholders who state their opinion are allocated significantly less money than their counterparts in the Baseline. Asymmetric reactions to the statements appear to be the driving force behind this result: Authorities deviate from their initial fairness judgment and follow stakeholders’ opinions if the requests are moderate; they largely ignore high monetary requests.

Engel, Christoph; Kleine, Marco (2015). Who Is Afraid of Pirates? An Experiment on the Deterrence of Innovation by Imitation, Research Policy, 44 (1), 20-33. DOI

• In the policy debate, intellectual property is often justified by what seems to be a straightforward argument: if innovators are not protected against others appropriating their ideas, incentives for innovation are suboptimally low. Now, in most industries and for most potential users, appropriating a foreign innovation is itself an investment decision fraught with cost and risk. Nonetheless, standard theory predicts too little innovation. Arguably the problem is exacerbated by the sensitivity of innovators to fairness; imitators do get a free lunch, after all. We model the situation as a game and test it in the lab. We find more appropriation, but also more innovation than predicted by standard theory. In the lab, the prospect of giving imitators a free lunch does not have a chilling effect on innovation. This even holds if innovation automatically spills over to an outsider and if successful imitation reduces the innovator's profit. Beliefs and the analysis of experiences in the repeated game demonstrate that participants are sensitive to the fairness problem. But this concern is not strong enough to outweigh the robust propensity to invest even more in innovation than predicted by standard theory. The data suggest that this behavior results from the intention not to be outperformed by one's peers.

Kleine, Marco (2015). Communication and Fairness: An Experimental Economics Approach. Jena: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität.

• http://www.gbv.de/dms/zbw/821467794.pdf

Mickeler, Maren; Khashabi, Pooyan; Kleine, Marco; Kretschmer, Tobias (2022). The Perks of Being Unknown: Implied Costs of Knowledge Seeking on Organizational Platforms, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 19-17. DOI

• Organizational platforms enable the efficient exchange of resources like knowledge or help among organizational members. Yet, employee engagement frequently remains low. Focusing on knowledge seekers, we argue that seeking behavior is influenced by implied (a) social-psychological costs, and (b) economic considerations, and posit that both costs are sensitive to revealing the seekers’ identity. In two experiments, we test our conjectures and find that both types of implied costs affect seeking behavior: if an individual’s identity becomes known, knowledge seeking on the platform decreases. If seeking comes with additional economic consequences, seeking behavior declines even further. We also find that females seek more in response to anonymity than males. These results highlight the role of user anonymity on platform engagement in organizational contexts.

Kleine, Marco (2021). No eureka! Incentives Hurt Creative Breakthrough Irrespective of the Incentives' Frame, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 21-15. DOI

• We investigate the effect of financial incentives, framed as gains and losses, on creative breakthrough. Rather than originating merely from diligent work, creative breakthrough entails a eureka-moment – the sudden insight and the radical reorganization of ideas for the solution of a problem. We argue that financial incentives can be detrimental for creative breakthrough. Moreover, framing financial incentives as losses may lead to particularly strong detrimental effects, compared to incentives framed as gains. We test our hypotheses in a laboratory experiment using a classical paradigm to investigate creative breakthrough: the candle problem (Duncker 1945). We find causal evidence that, relative to a condition without performance-contingent incentives, financial incentives are counterproductive for creative breakthrough. This holds true for financial incentives framed as gains as well as for those framed as losses. We do not find any significant differences arising from the framing of incentives. Financial incentives and the loss framing of incentives are classical managerial tools for enhancing employee performance. They have proven effective for routine tasks. Our results, however, suggest that their success cannot be generalized to work environments that build on people's ability to achieve breakthroughs via eureka-moments.

Kleine, Marco; Heite, Jonas; Rosendahl Huber, Laura (2020). Subsidized R&D Collaboration: The Causal Effect of Innovation Vouchers on Innovation Performance, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 20-11. DOI

• We study the causal effect of subsidized R&D collaboration on innovation performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In particular, we make use of a randomized controlled trial to analyze the effect of a nationwide innovation voucher scheme in the United Kingdom that grants SMEs across all industries financial support of up to 5,000 GBP for engaging the services of experts, e.g., from universities, research institutes or IP advisors, when pursuing an innovation-related project. Our results show that the innovation voucher program successfully promotes the execution of these innovation projects with positive short- and medium-term effects on product and service development, internal processes and intellectual property protection. Based on our results, we also provide some practical guidance to further improve the effectiveness of voucher programs.
• Also published in: Academy of Management Proceedings Vol. 2020, No. 1
• Also published in: Research Policy Volume 51, Issue 6, July 2022, 104515

Fischer, Sven; Kleine, Marco; Zizzo, Daniel John (2017). The Effect of Compliance Time in Patent Examination: An Experimental Study, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 17-05.

• Using controlled and incentivized decision experiments, we explore whether the length of compliance periods in patent examinations affects behaviour and the overall efficiency of the system. In our stylized experiments, participants decide in the role of a patentee who faces uncertainty about the prospects of the application and must invest real effort over an extended period of time, in order to reach a minimum threshold. Overall, we find some evidence that a very long time horizon outperforms a short one.
• SSRN

Kleine, Marco; Kube, Sebastian (2015). Communication and Trust in Principal-Team Relationships: Experimental Evidence, Preprints of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Bonn/6. Bonn: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

• We study how upward communication – from workers to managers – about individual efforts affects the effectiveness of gift exchange as a contract-enforcement device for work teams. Our findings suggest that the use of such self-assessments can be detrimental to workers’ performance. In the controlled environment of a laboratory gift-exchange experiment, our workers regularly overstate their own contribution to the joint team output. Misreporting seems to spread distrust within the team of workers, as well as between managers and workers. This manifests itself in managers being less generous with workers’ payments, and in workers being more sensitive to the perceived kindness of their relative wage payments. By varying the source and degree of information about individual efforts between treatments, we see that precise knowledge about workers’ actual contributions to the team output is beneficial for the success of gift-exchange relationships. Yet, workers’ self-assessments can be a problematic tool to gather this information.
• http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2015_06online.pdf