DDBA 8521 Week 4 Incentive Conflict Analysis Example

Fix Root Causes, Said the Directive; Close Tickets Fast, Said the Review: An Incentive Analysis of a Software Company's Support Engineers and What Their Predictable Response Reveals About the Organization

Student Name

Walden University

DDBA 8521: Seminar in Change Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Fix Root Causes, Said the Directive; Close Tickets Fast, Said the Review: An Incentive Analysis of a Software Company's Support Engineers and What Their Predictable Response Reveals About the Organization

The Directive and the Measure

In January 2026, the vice president of customer support at a composite software company in Austin that sells scheduling software to medical practices issued a directive to her 46 support engineers: "Stop closing tickets with workarounds. Find and fix root causes, even if it takes longer." The directive followed a year in which the same 12 problems produced about 40 percent of all tickets. But the engineers' quarterly reviews, which set their bonuses and determine promotion, still rested on two measures: tickets closed per hour worked and customer satisfaction scores on closed tickets. Neither measure had changed.

The Predictable Response

Engineers did what the measures rewarded. In the first quarter of 2026, tickets closed per hour fell only 3 percent, and the share of tickets referred to the engineering team for root-cause fixes rose from 4 percent to 6 percent, against an informal goal of 20 percent. In interviews, engineers said they agreed with the directive and wanted to fix root causes, but a root-cause investigation could take a full day, during which their closure rate would collapse. One said: "I can fix the problem for everybody, or I can make my numbers. I can't do both."

Kerr (1975) predicted that people follow what an organization pays for, not what it says it wants, whenever the two diverge. The directive hoped for root-cause work; the review rewarded fast closure. The engineers' response was not resistance to the directive; it was compliance with the measures.

What the Response Reveals

The response reveals three things about the organization. First, the measurement system carries more authority than the vice president's directive. Engineers reasoned, correctly, that a directive without a change in review criteria was a statement of hope, while the review was where consequences lay. Second, the organization's change process separates policy from measurement: the directive came from the support leadership, while review criteria are owned by human resources and change once a year. Third, the closure-rate measure has shaped what the organization knows about itself. Because fast closure is rewarded, the same problems recur and are closed again, and the organization's records count each recurrence as productivity.

Reichers et al. (1997) found that cynicism about change grows when employees see past change efforts fail or see leaders say one thing and reward another. Two engineers mentioned an earlier initiative in 2024, a push for knowledge base articles, that was dropped when it lowered closure rates. The engineers' skepticism about the new directive had a history.

What Would Change the Response

If the organization wants root-cause work, the measures must move. Options include counting root-cause referrals that engineering accepts, measuring recurrence of the same problem across customers, weighting closure rates by ticket type or setting aside a share of each engineer's hours for root-cause work that is excluded from the closure rate. Each option has its own risk of gaming, which should be watched. Weick and Quinn (1999) noted that changes often fail when introduced as episodic announcements into systems that continue to run on established routines; the review cycle is one such routine.

Who Can Change the Measures

If the measures must move, the next question is who can move them. The vice president owns the directive but not the review criteria, which human resources sets once a year for all customer-facing teams. Changing them mid-year would require the chief people officer's agreement and an exception for the support team. The vice president could act sooner within her own authority by setting aside two hours of each engineer's week as protected root-cause time, excluded from the closure-rate calculation her managers use in weekly one-on-ones, while she negotiates the formal change. That interim step would not alter bonuses, but it would show engineers that the directive has some force behind it.

What the Engineers Proposed

When asked what would make root-cause work possible, engineers offered specific ideas: count a root-cause fix accepted by engineering as the equivalent of a set number of closed tickets, and publish a monthly list of recurring problems retired. Both ideas would let the measures reward what the directive asks for. That the engineers had ready answers supports the analysis: they were not opposed to the directive, only constrained by how they were judged.

Limits

The analysis rests on one quarter of data, and part of the small rise in referrals may reflect engineers' genuine effort despite the measures. A second quarter will show whether the pattern holds.

References

Kerr, S. (1975). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Academy of Management Journal, 18(4), 769-783. https://doi.org/10.2307/255378

Reichers, A. E., Wanous, J. P., & Austin, J. T. (1997). Understanding and managing cynicism about organizational change. Academy of Management Executive, 11(1), 48-59. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.1997.9707100659

Weick, K. E., & Quinn, R. E. (1999). Organizational change and development. Annual Review of Psychology, 50(1), 361-386. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.50.1.361