Students in the 2019 Masters of Accounting (MAcc) program competed in their own version of March Madness. When not watching the basketball brackets play out, MAcc student teams each researched and wrote a three-page article describing a dimension of “Performance Management 3.0,” by aggregating research and showing examples from leading companies.
After random assignment of teams into Performance Management 3.0 brackets, a panel of SAF alumni chose the top article from each bracket as recipients of the Alumni Awards. From these finalists – the MAcc program’s elite eight teams - two members of the CPMRE selected one article to receive the CPMRE’s inaugural Publisher’s Prize!
Judges noted that all eight finalist articles were terrific, but the prize-winning article, “Is Cash Really King? Insights on Non-Cash Compensation in the World of Tech,“ written by SAF Masters of Accounting students Reina Dave, Andrew Giles, Annu Puri, and Ram Subbiah, stood out as the best.
Winning team (from L to R): Master of Accounting students Andrew Giles, Ram Subbiah, Reina Dave, and Annu Puri
The team examined an important performance management issue, focused on a particular industry segment, integrated results from a survey that they administered with a thorough literature review, and identified clear implications for practice. Their article addressed the timely question of how millennial employees value and respond to the non-monetary incentives common at many tech firms. Overall, the authors found that millennial employees enjoy individual, personalized rewards that make them feel cared about, and they also highly value collective experiential rewards such as free meals with their co-workers that help build collaborative and welcoming work cultures.
Surprisingly, despite reporting valuing the availability of these rewards when selecting from among competing job offers, survey respondents also reported that they generally did not consider them to be an important factor when deciding whether to stay at an employer. This interesting insight raises questions about the effectiveness of non-monetary incentives with respect to employee retention.
Congratulations to Andrew, Annu, Ram and Reina for their outstanding article! Read their prize-winning article Is Cash Really King? (PDF).