Work motivation and teams

Author(s)
Simone Haeckl, Rupert Sausgruber, Jean-Robert Tyran
Abstract

This paper presents a novel technique to measure motivation for working on a task using deviations from the money-maximising benchmark in a real-effort experiment. Although we find that average output increases in response to team incentives and observation, we also find that workers with high intrinsic motivation do not respond to team incentives. The reason is that highly motivated workers already work hard, and team incentives are not strong enough to overcome the high cost of additional effort.

Organisation(s)
Vienna Center for Experimental Economics, Department of Economics
External organisation(s)
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (WU)
Journal
Economics Letters
Volume
244
ISSN
0165-1765
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2024.112020
Publication date
09-2024
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
502057 Experimental economics, 502002 Labour economics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/f76cb6e2-df1d-4de3-8db2-55a044cb3bf3