IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/econwp/099.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The lure of authority: Motivation and incentive effects of power

Author

Listed:
  • Ernst Fehr
  • Holger Herz
  • Tom Wilkening

Abstract

Authority and power permeate political, social, and economic life, but empirical knowledge about the motivational origins and consequences of authority is limited. We study the motivation and incentive effects of authority experimentally in an authority- delegation game. Individuals often retain authority even when its delegation is in their material interest - suggesting that authority has non-pecuniary consequences for utility. Authority also leads to over-provision of effort by the controlling parties, while a large percentage of subordinates under-provide effort despite pecuniary incentives to the contrary. Authority thus has important motivational consequences that exacerbate the inefficiencies arising from suboptimal delegation choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Ernst Fehr & Holger Herz & Tom Wilkening, 2012. "The lure of authority: Motivation and incentive effects of power," ECON - Working Papers 099, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:099
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.uzh.ch/apps/workingpapers/wp/econwp099.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    2. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    3. Philippe Aghion & Mathias Dewatripont & Patrick Rey, 2004. "Transferable Control," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(1), pages 115-138, March.
    4. Loomes, Graham & Sugden, Robert, 1982. "Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice under Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 805-824, December.
    5. McKelvey Richard D. & Palfrey Thomas R., 1995. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 6-38, July.
    6. Bowles, Samuel & Gintis, Herbert, 1988. "Contested Exchange: Political Economy and Modern Economic Theory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 145-150, May.
    7. Datta, Somnath & Satten, Glen A., 2005. "Rank-Sum Tests for Clustered Data," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 100, pages 908-915, September.
    8. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    9. Ernst Fehr & John A. List, 2004. "The Hidden Costs and Returns of Incentives-Trust and Trustworthiness Among CEOs," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(5), pages 743-771, September.
    10. repec:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17678/ is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Dirk Sliwka, 2001. "On the Costs and Benefits of Delegation in Organizations," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 157(4), pages 568-590, December.
    12. Philippe Aghion & Mathias Dewatripont & Patrick Rey, 2004. "Transferable Control," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(1), pages 115-138, March.
    13. Helmut Bester & Daniel Krähmer, 2008. "Delegation and incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(3), pages 664-682, September.
    14. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    15. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 2001. "Ten Little Treasures of Game Theory and Ten Intuitive Contradictions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1402-1422, December.
    16. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE 2.0 - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Working Paper Series in Economics 10, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    17. Heikki Rantakari, 2008. "Governing Adaptation -super-1," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(4), pages 1257-1285.
    18. John R. Hamman & George Loewenstein & Roberto A. Weber, 2010. "Self-Interest through Delegation: An Additional Rationale for the Principal-Agent Relationship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1826-1846, September.
    19. Matthew Rabin, 2000. "Risk Aversion and Expected-Utility Theory: A Calibration Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1281-1292, September.
    20. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    21. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    22. Björn Bartling & Urs Fischbacher, 2012. "Shifting the Blame: On Delegation and Responsibility," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(1), pages 67-87.
    23. Emel Filiz-Ozbay & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2007. "Auctions with Anticipated Regret: Theory and Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1407-1418, September.
    24. Gary Charness & Ramon Cobo-Reyes & Natalia Jimenez & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos, 2012. "The Hidden Advantage of Delegation: Pareto Improvements in a Gift Exchange Game," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2358-2379, August.
    25. Mariana Blanco & Dirk Engelmann & Alexander Koch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2010. "Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(4), pages 412-438, December.
    26. Susan Athey & John Roberts, 2001. "Organizational Design: Decision Rights and Incentive Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 200-205, May.
    27. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1995. "Debt and Seniority: An Analysis of the Role of Hard Claims in Constraining Management," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 567-585, June.
    28. Lucas C. Coffman, 2011. "Intermediation Reduces Punishment (and Reward)," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 77-106, November.
    29. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2003-10, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    30. Baker, George & Gibbons, Robert & Murphy, Kevin J, 1999. "Informal Authority in Organizations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 56-73, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ernst Fehr & Michael Powell & Tom Wilkening, 2014. "Handing Out Guns at a Knife Fight: Behavioral Limitations of Subgame-Perfect Implementation," CESifo Working Paper Series 4948, CESifo.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Michael Powell & Tom Wilkening, 2021. "Behavioral Constraints on the Design of Subgame-Perfect Implementation Mechanisms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(4), pages 1055-1091, April.
    3. Alonso, Ricardo, 2009. "Strategic control and strategic communication," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 58682, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Lucas C. Coffman & Alexander Gotthard-Real, 2019. "Moral Perceptions of Advised Actions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3904-3927, August.
    5. Gary Charness & Ramón Cobo-Reyes & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos & Jose Maria Perez, 2016. "Social comparisons in wage delegation: experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 433-459, June.
    6. Dominguez-Martinez, Silvia & Sloof, Randolph & von Siemens, Ferdinand A., 2014. "Monitored by your friends, not your foes: Strategic ignorance and the delegation of real authority," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 289-305.
    7. Gerald Eisenkopf & Urs Fischbacher, 2015. "Naïve Responses to Kind Delegation," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(7), pages 487-498, October.
    8. Oliver Hart & Bengt Holmstrom, 2008. "A Theory of Firm Scope," NBER Working Papers 14613, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Björn Bartling & Ernst Fehr & Holger Herz, 2014. "The Intrinsic Value of Decision Rights," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2005-2039, November.
    10. Wouter Dessein & Richard Holden, 2022. "Organizations with Power-Hungry Agents," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(S1), pages 263-291.
    11. Ilya Segal & Michael D.Whinston, 2012. "Property Rights," Introductory Chapters, in: Robert Gibbons & John Roberts (ed.),: The Handbook of Organizational Economics, Princeton University Press.
    12. Silvia Dominguez-Martinez & Randolph Sloof & Ferdinand von Siemens, 2010. "Monitoring your Friends, not your Foes: Strategic Ignorance and the Delegation of Real Authority," CESifo Working Paper Series 3172, CESifo.
    13. Tigran Melkonyan, 2014. "Decentralization, Incentive Contracts and the Effect of Distortions in Performance Measures," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 82(6), pages 631-652, December.
    14. Peter H. Kriss & Roberto Weber, 2013. "Organizational formation and change: lessons from economic laboratory experiments," Chapters, in: Anna Grandori (ed.), Handbook of Economic Organization, chapter 14, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Ernst Fehr & Oliver Hart & Christian Zehnder, 2011. "Contracts as Reference Points--Experimental Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 493-525, April.
    16. Orsola Garofalo & Christina Rott, 2018. "Shifting Blame? Experimental Evidence of Delegating Communication," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(8), pages 3911-3925, August.
    17. Shuo Liu & Dimitri Migrow, 2019. "Designing organizations in volatile markets," ECON - Working Papers 319, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    18. Vetter, Stefan, 2013. "Delegating decision rights for anticipated rewards as an alternative to corruption: An experiment," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 188-204.
    19. Alberti, Federica & Güth, Werner, 2013. "Studying deception without deceiving participants: An experiment of deception experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 196-204.
    20. Randolph Sloof & Ferdinand von Siemens, 2015. "Decision Initiation, Decision Implementation, and the Allocation of Decision Rights," CESifo Working Paper Series 5509, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Organizational behavior; incentives; experiments and contracts;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zur:econwp:099. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: .

    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: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.