IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpla/9402002.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incentives for Helping on the Job: Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Drago

    (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

  • Gerald T. Garvey

    (Australian National University)

Abstract

Recent advances in incentive theory stress the multi- dimensional nature of agent effort and particularly the case where workers can improve the performance of others through `helping' efforts. This paper provides a simple model of an agent's incentive to help depending on the compensation package, the cost of monitoring, and the allocation of tasks. We then analyze the determinants of reported helping efforts within workgroups for a sample of Australian workers. As expected, workers are less likely to help one another when promotion incentives are strong. Subsidiary results are consistent with our `contest' interpretation of this finding and not consistent with `gift exchange' or other variants of the efficiency wage hypothesis. Also as predicted, a wide range of job tasks amplifies the negative effect of promotional incentives, while monitoring of help mitigates the negative effect. We find an unexpected positive effect of piece rates on helping effort for long-term employees which we show is consistent with repeated game effects between workers. These considerations do not overturn our findings about the effects of tournaments.(JEL J33)

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Drago & Gerald T. Garvey, 1994. "Incentives for Helping on the Job: Theory and Evidence," Labor and Demography 9402002, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 29 Mar 1994.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:9402002
    Note: 32 pages text, 4 pages tables, WordPerfect 5.1 file. VVdecode then Unzip to read. Paper substantially revised, mainly to deal with possibility of efficiency wage effects and to incorporate simulations.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/lab/papers/9402/9402002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/lab/papers/9402/9402002.ps.gz
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Baker, George P & Jensen, Michael C & Murphy, Kevin J, 1988. " Compensation and Incentives: Practice vs. Theory," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(3), pages 593-616, July.
    3. Itoh, Hideshi, 1991. "Incentives to Help in Multi-agent Situations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 611-636, May.
    4. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    5. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-715, September.
    6. George A. Akerlof, 1982. "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(4), pages 543-569.
    7. Ramakrishnan, Ram T S & Thakor, Anjan V, 1991. "Cooperation versus Competition in Agency," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 248-283, Fall.
    8. Baker, George P, 1992. "Incentive Contracts and Performance Measurement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 598-614, June.
    9. Rebecca S. Demsetz, 1993. "Voting Behavior in Union Representation Elections: The Influence of Skill Homogeneity and Skill Group Size," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 47(1), pages 99-113, October.
    10. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    11. Lazear, Edward P, 1989. "Pay Equality and Industrial Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 561-580, June.
    12. Baker, George & Gibbs, Michael & Holmstrom, Bengt, 1993. "Hierarchies and compensation: A case study," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 366-378, April.
    13. Main, Brian G M & O'Reilly, Charles A, III & Wade, James, 1993. "Top Executive Pay: Tournament or Teamwork?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(4), pages 606-628, October.
    14. Garvey, Gerald T & Swan, Peter L, 1992. "Managerial Objectives, Capital Structure, and the Provision of Worker Incentives," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(4), pages 357-379, October.
    15. Ronald G. Ehrenberg & Michael L. Bognanno, 1990. "The Incentive Effects of Tournaments Revisited: Evidence from the European PGA Tour," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 43(3), pages 74, April.
    16. Drago, Robert & Turnbull, Geoffrey K., 1988. "Individual versus group piece rates under team technologies," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-10, March.
    17. Malcomson, James M, 1984. "Work Incentives, Hierarchy, and Internal Labor Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 486-507, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Canice Prendergast, 1996. "What Happens Within Firms? A Survey of Empirical Evidence on Compensation Policies," NBER Working Papers 5802, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Bingley, P. & Eriksson, T, 2001. "Pay Spread and Skewness. Employee Effort and Firm Productivity," Papers 01-2, Aarhus School of Business - Department of Economics.
    3. Waldman, Michael, 2013. "Classic promotion tournaments versus market-based tournaments," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 198-210.
    4. Drago, Robert & Garvey, Gerald T, 1998. "Incentives for Helping on the Job: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(1), pages 1-25, January.
    5. DeVaro, Jed, 2011. "Using "opposing responses" and relative performance to distinguish empirically among alternative models of promotions," MPRA Paper 35175, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    7. Sprinkle, Geoffrey B., 2003. "Perspectives on experimental research in managerial accounting," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(2-3), pages 287-318.
    8. Ola Kvaløy & Trond E. Olsen, 2008. "Cooperation in Knowledge-Intensive Firms," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(4), pages 410-440.
    9. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2291-2372 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Anders Frederiksen & Elod Takats, 2004. "Optimal incentive mix of performance pay and efficiency wage," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 0418, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    11. Abeler, Johannes & Altmann, Steffen & Goerg, Sebastian J. & Kube, Sebastian & Wibral, Matthias, 2011. "Equity and Efficiency in Multi-Worker Firms: Insights from Experimental Economics," IZA Discussion Papers 5727, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Aditya U. Kulkarni & Christian Wernz, 2020. "Optimal incentives for teams: a multiscale decision theory approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 288(1), pages 307-329, May.
    13. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2485-2563 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Garicano, Luis & Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio, 2005. "Sabotage in Tournaments: Making the Beautiful Game a Bit Less Beautiful," CEPR Discussion Papers 5231, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Theilen Bernd, 2009. "Market Competition and Lower Tier Incentives," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-29, June.
    16. Rebitzer, James B. & Taylor, Lowell J., 2011. "Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motives: Standard and Behavioral Approaches to Agency and Labor Markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 8, pages 701-772, Elsevier.
    17. Paul Hek & Daniel Vuuren, 2011. "Are older workers overpaid? A literature review," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 18(4), pages 436-460, August.
    18. Carr, Michael D., 2011. "Work hours and wage inequality: Evidence from the 2004 WERS," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 417-427, August.
    19. David Berri & R. Jewell, 2004. "Wage inequality and firm performance: Professional basketball's natural experiment," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 32(2), pages 130-139, June.
    20. Alexander K. Koch & Eloïc Peyrache, 2011. "Aligning Ambition and Incentives," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 655-688.
    21. Flores-Fillol, Ricardo & Iranzo, Susana & Mane, Ferran, 2017. "Teamwork and delegation of decisions within the firm," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 1-29.
    22. Oriana Bandiera (STICERD & LSE, 2004. "Relative and Absolute Incentives: Evidence on Worker Productivity," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 277, Econometric Society.
    23. Gibbs, Michael, 1995. "Incentive compensation in a corporate hierarchy," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 247-277, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J - Labor and Demographic Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:9402002. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.