Professor Nieken

Prof. Dr. Petra Nieken

Short Vita

Prof. Dr. Petra Nieken has held the Chair of Human Resource Management at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) since 2014. Her work sits at the intersection of organizational economics, behavioral economics, and leadership research,  combining rigorous theory with experimental methods to understand how people lead, cooperate, and perform in modern organizations.

Before joining KIT, Prof. Nieken was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Applied Microeconomics at the University of Bonn, where she was a member of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre "Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems." From 2013 to 2014, she was a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley. She has also been associated as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Prof. Nieken completed her doctorate within the DFG Research Training Group "Risk Management" at the University of Cologne.

At KIT, Prof. Nieken serves as Spokesperson of the Karlsruhe Decision & Design Lab (KD2Lab), KIT's infrastructure for experimental research in economics and decision science. She is Principal Investigator in the DFG-funded research training group KD2School. She serves as Associate Editor of The Leadership Quarterly since 2026 and is active in the ManyDesign and ManyLabs initiatives. She collaborates with industry partners including NIM — the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions.

For a full academic CV, please click here.

 

Research Interests

Prof. Nieken investigates how people are motivated, how they lead and cooperate, and how digital transformation reshapes work and organizations. Her research spans three interconnected areas.

Future of work and digital leadership: Prof. Nieken examines which communication strategies and media are effective in digital and hybrid work environments, and how leaders can drive performance in virtual and gig-economy settings. Her article "How (not) to motivate online workers: Two controlled field experiments on leadership in the gig economy" received the Best Article Award 2021 from The Leadership Quarterly.

Incentives, motivation, and performance: Her work investigates how incentive systems, relative performance information, and organizational design shape individual and team behavior,  including the behavioral consequences of competition, risk-taking, and moral decision-making at the workplace.

Fairness, gender, and inclusion: Prof. Nieken studies gender differences in competition, sabotage, and dishonesty, as well as the effects of gendered language on economic behavior and norm compliance. This work contributes directly to questions of equal opportunity and inclusive organizational design.

She publishes regularly in leading international journals including European Economic Review, Experimental Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, The Leadership Quarterly, The Accounting Review, and PNAS

 

Publications

Sorted by type of publication

Articles in Refereed Journals

  1. Nieken, P. and Reuscher, T.F. (2026): Social Gaze Dynamics in Teams: Comparing Faceto-Face and Video Meeting Settings, PLoS One 21(3): e0329060. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329060

  2. Nieken, P. and Ressi, A. (2025): Where Do I Belong? Prospective Relative Performance Information under High- and Low-Performing Reference Groups, The Accounting Review, DOI: 10.2308/TAR-2023-0275

  3. Dato, S., Feess, E. and Nieken, P. (2024): Lying in Competitive Environments: Identifying Behavioral Impacts, European Economic Review, 170, 104844.

  4. Benke, I., Knierim, M., Adam, M., Beigl, M., Dorner, V., Ebner-Priemer, U., Herrmann, M., Klarmann, M., Mädche, M., Nafziger, J., Nieken, P., Pfeiffer, J., Puppe, C., Putze, F., Scheibehenne, B., Schultz, T., Weinhardt, C (2024). Hybrid Adaptive Systems, Business Information Systems Engineering, 66, 233-247.

  5. Nieken, P. and Schmitz, P.W. (2023). Contracting under Asymmetric Information and Externalities: An Experimental Study, Experimental Economics, 26, 989-1021

  6. Nieken, P. (forthcoming): Charisma in the Gig Economy: The Impact of Digital Leadership and Communication Channels on Performance, Leadership Quarterly

  7. Huber, C., Dreber, A., Huber, J., +90, Nieken, P. and Holzmeister, F. (2023): Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), 120 (23) e2215572120

  8. Fest, S., Kvaløy, O., Nieken, P. and Schöttner, A. (2021): How (not) to motivate online workers: Two controlled field experiments on leadership in the gig economy, Leadership Quarterly, 32 (6), 101514

  9. Staudt, P.; Greif-Winzrieth, A. and Nieken, P. (2021). Increasing Contributions to Sustainable-Projects through Digital Nudges amplifying social Comparison, ICIS 2021 Proceedings. 12

  10. Dato, S. and Nieken, P. (2020). Gender Differences in Sabotage: The Role of Uncertainty and Beliefs, Experimental Economics, 23 (2), 353-391
  11. Dato, S., Feess, E. and Nieken, P. (2019). Lying and Reciprocity, Games and Economic Behavior, 118, pp. 193-218
  12. Berger, J. and Nieken, P. (2016). Heterogeneous Contestants and Effort Provision in Tournaments – An Empirical Investigation with Professional Sports Data, Journal of Sports Economics, 17 (7), pp. 631 - 660
  13. Kvaløy, O, Nieken, P. and Schöttner, A. (2015). Hidden Benefits of Reward – A Field Experiment On Motivation and Monetary Incentives, European Economic Review, 76, pp. 188 - 199
  14. Nieken, P. and Sliwka, D. (2015). Management Changes, Reputation, and “Big Bath”-Earnings Management, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 24 (3), pp. 501 - 522
  15. Kräkel, M. and Nieken, P. (2015). Relative Performance Pay in the Shadow of Crisis, European Economic Review, 74, pp. 244 - 268
  16. Dato, S. and Nieken, P. (2014). Gender Differences in Competition and Sabotage, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 100, pp. 64 - 80
  17. Kräkel, M., Nieken, P. and Przemeck, J. (2014). Risk Taking and Investing in Electoral Competition, European Journal of Political Economy, 33, pp. 98 - 120
  18. Gürtler, O., Münster, J. and Nieken, P. (2013). Information Policy in Tournaments with Sabotage, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 115 (3), pp. 932 - 966
  19. Breuer, K., Nieken, P. and Sliwka, D. (2013). Social Ties and Subjective Performance Evaluations - An Empirical Investigation, Review of Managerial Science, 7 (2), pp. 141 - 157
  20. Nieken, P. and Schmitz, P.W. (2012). Repeated Moral Hazard and Contracts with Memory: A Laboratory Experiment, Games and Economic Behavior, 75 (2), pp. 1000 - 1008
  21. Nieken, P. (2010). On the Choice of Risk and Effort in Tournaments – Experimental Evidence, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 19 (3), pp. 811 - 840
  22. Nieken, P. and Sliwka, D. (2010). Risk‐Taking in Tournaments – Theory and Experimental Evidence, Journal of Economic Psychology, 31 (3), pp. 254 - 268