Helping under a combination of team and tournament incentives

Abstract

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The Competitive Struggle to Win Tournaments: The Allies’ Race to Capture Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest

“…Thus, in attempting to win the three-pronged tournament described above, these forces broke with what was certainly a prior practice of cooperation among them in driving the German Army back from the beaches of Normandy and into central and southern Germany. The absence of such cooperation in this case supports work on tournament theory by Irlenbusch and Ruchala (2008), Müller and Schotter (2010) and Danilov et al (2019). Going even further, O'Daniel's decision to thwart, by blocking access to the two Salzach River bridges, efforts by the French 2 nd Armored and U.S. 101 st Airborne Divisions to secure the three prestige trophies located in the "Führer area" supports the link between tournament theory's incentive structure and engagement by participants in sabotage, as discussed in research by Lazear (1989) and Harbring and Irlenbusch (2005).…”

“…They find higher propensities to engage in fraud in firms with strong tournament incentives, as proxied by the CEO pay gap (Haß, Müller & Vergauwe, 2015). Lastly, Danilov, Harbring and Irlenbusch (2019) present a model that combines elements of relative rewards and a team bonus in an investigation of their effects on effort, help and sabotage. Their model suggests that team members help less as relative rewards increase, but that this issue is mitigated by a team bonus that is proportional to the output of the whole team (Gómez-Mejia & Franco-Santos, 2016).…”

The Incentive Effects of Tournaments and Peer Effects in Team Production: Evidence from Esports

“…Although Dota 2 players control in-game heroes assigned with different tactical roles, which are not directly substitutable within the team, their individual effort decision-making should positively respond to the increased prize differential. Research has found that, when a bonus is awarded in proportion to the output of the whole team, members tend to positively adjust their effort exertion as relative rewards escalate (Danilov et al, 2019). In theoretical analysis, economists also assume the prize to be shared equally between team members, even if their efforts are not perfectly substitutable (Fu et al, 2015;Shenkman et al, 2022).…”

Do Output-Dependent Prizes Alleviate the Sabotage Problem in Tournaments?

“…In our paper, we analyze whether a tournament where prizes are not fixed in advance but rather vary with the joint output produced by all contestants (Güth et al [5]) alleviates the sabotage problem in tournaments or even induces help. Our study relates to the one by Danilov et al [4] which analyzes the effects of combining tournament incentives with an additional team incentive. While in the compensation function studied by Danilov et al [4] one compensation component (i.e., a team incentive) aims at reducing the adverse effects of another (i.e., a fixed-prize tournament incentive), we analyze a setting where the tournament incentive itself is designed in a way to reduce sabotage or to even induce help.…”

“…Our study relates to the one by Danilov et al [4] which analyzes the effects of combining tournament incentives with an additional team incentive. While in the compensation function studied by Danilov et al [4] one compensation component (i.e., a team incentive) aims at reducing the adverse effects of another (i.e., a fixed-prize tournament incentive), we analyze a setting where the tournament incentive itself is designed in a way to reduce sabotage or to even induce help. That is, we are concerned with a tournament-inherent solution to the sabotage problem.…”