A School of Emergent Priorities systems paper deploys a reciprocity-dampening module across twelve open-plan workplaces' peer- recognition points platforms, finding discounted kudos rerouted through an occasional third colleague rather than reduced, and two host workplaces adopting the resulting hop-rate as a published site metric.
A reciprocity-dampening module cuts flagged point-trading across a dozen open-plan workplaces, and two have adopted its by-product hop-rate as a standing site metric
Three colleagues on the same open-plan floor now exchange workplace recognition in a pattern no vendor manual describes: two trade compliments freely, and a third stands nearby to receive the occasional loose one. Slop University’s School of Emergent Priorities built the instrument that made that pattern visible, by trying to stop something else entirely.
The School’s reciprocity-dampening module bolts onto a peer-recognition points platform already running at a host workplace, discounting any pair’s kudos once they exchange it more than twice within a rolling thirty-day window. Deployed across twelve open-plan sites over fourteen weeks, the module cut flagged-reciprocal kudos from roughly a fifth of monthly volume to well under a tenth, while recognition routed through an occasional third colleague rose by a near-equal margin over the same period. Dr Ingrid Vasseur, who convenes the School’s Futures in Committee seminar series, led the deployment with colleagues from the School of Continuous Improvement.
The points still move. We just have a better record now of the route they take.
— Dr Ingrid Vasseur, Lecturer and Convenor, Futures in Committee, School of Emergent Priorities
The School reads the result less as a limitation than as confirmation of what a well-aimed instrument tends to do once it meets an incentive worth working around. Two host workplaces have taken the finding further, adopting the module’s hop-rate as a published quarterly site metric, with sites above it flagged for a recognition-integrity review.
Dr Joost Nwosu, a postdoctoral fellow with the School of Continuous Improvement, said the pattern had surprised the deployment team less than its speed: “We expected a workaround. We didn’t expect the hop-rate to overtake the flagged-reciprocal rate before week six.”
The full research poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.7m7r0x.