Why do Firms Evaluate Individually their Employees : The Team Work Case

This paper aims at analyzing the relationships between teamwork, autonomy and individual evaluation interviews. Within an agency model with teamwork, we show that a production technology characterized by strong horizontal interdependencies and super-modularity does not ensure coordination within a team. Such technological characteristics seem more frequent when firms use new organizational devices favoring quality, time or cost cuts targets. In such organizations, the monetary cost of coordination incentives is increasing with the relative level of technological interdependencies. Hence, the principal is incited to resort to non-monetary incentives that are less costly for her. Evaluation interviews may play a role of non-monetary incentives towards coordination by generating a signal aimed at convincing workers of the existence of a team spirit. According to this point of view, the traditional issue of the relationship between autonomy and evaluation interviews vanishes. The predictions of this model are then tested empirically using French data drawn from the surveys “Changement Organisationnel et Informatisation” (1997), “Techniques et Organisation du Travail” (1987 and 1993), and Conditions de Travail (1991 and 1998).