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Do Employees Care about their Relative Position? Behavioural Evidence Focusing on Performance

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Author Info
Benno Torgler
Markus Schaffner
Sascha L. Schmidt
Bruno S. Frey

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Abstract

Do employees care about their relative (economic) position among co-workers in an organization? And if so, does it raise or lower their performance? Behavioral evidence on these important questions is rare. This paper takes a novel approach to answering these questions, working with sports data from two different disciplines, basketball and soccer. These sports tournaments take place in a controlled environment defined by the rules of the game. We find considerable support that positional concerns and envy reduce individual performance. In contrast, there does not seem to be any tolerance for income disparity, based on the hope that such differences signal that better times are under way. Positive behavioral consequences are observed for those who are experiencing better times.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA) in its series CREMA Working Paper Series with number 2008-12.

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Date of creation: Apr 2008
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Handle: RePEc:cra:wpaper:2008-12

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Related research
Keywords: Relative income positional concerns envy social comparison relative derivation performance

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D00 - Microeconomics - - General - - - General
D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Recreation; Tourism

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This page was last updated on 2008-8-18.


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