Knowledge is key to success in the modern business landscape. Firms invest billions of dollars every year in knowledge management systems, which commonly use artificial intelligence to allow within-firm knowledge transfer to occur automatically. Despite this investment, these systems often fall...

Research suggests that employees work harder under penalty contracts than under economically equivalent bonus contracts. We build on this literature by examining how the motivational advantage of penalty contracts depends on a common aspect of real-world contracts: payoff ambiguity. With payoff...