Wage delegation in the field

Jeworrek, Sabrina; Mertins, Vanessa

doi:10.1111/jems.12313

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(83 reference statements)

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“…Faillo and Piovanelli (2017) provide evidence that the delegation of the salary decision indeed increases intrinsic motivation. In line with these findings, Jeworrek and Mertins (2019) show that delegating the salary choice increases performance significantly in a natural experiment. The authors show that the positive effect is primarily driven by the transfer of responsibility.…”

Section: Self-set Salariessupporting

confidence: 83%

“…We show that self-set salaries are an instrument that increases the quantity without affecting the average creativity. Further, our study contributes to research on self-set salaries (e.g., Charness et al 2012Charness et al , 2015Faillo and Piovanelli 2017;Jeworrek and Mertins 2019). While prior research focuses on non-creative tasks, we provide evidence that self-set salaries increase intrinsic motivation and consequently performance in a creative task setting.…”

supporting

confidence: 50%

“…Thereby, we find that self-set salaries increase the quantity while the average creativity is unaffected. Second, we contribute to research on self-set salaries (e.g., Charness et al 2012Charness et al , 2015Faillo and Piovanelli 2017;Jeworrek and Mertins 2019) by showing that self-set salaries have positive motivational effects in a creative task context. Prior literature primarily focuses on settings with chosen effort or effort in routine tasks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Self-set salaries and creativity

et al. 2020

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Organizations frequently try to incentivize employees to develop highly creative solutions. In this study, we examine self-set salaries as a specific type of incentive design. We investigate whether self-set salaries affect employees’ motivation and overall (creative) performance. Moreover, because self-set salaries potentially risk opportunistic employee behavior, we consider the effect of the observability of peer performance on employees’ level of self-set salaries. Using a laboratory experiment, we hold the average employee compensation constant and demonstrate that, in comparison with fixed-pay contracts, self-set salaries increase the quantitative performance in creative tasks without affecting the average creativity. However, we do not find significant differences between the amount of individuals’ self-set salaries with observability of peer performance and the amount for individuals without the chance to observe peer performance. Our findings are important for firms that rely on the development of creative ideas but are unsure about the effects of the introduction of self-set salaries.

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Section: Self-set Salariessupporting

confidence: 83%

supporting

confidence: 50%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Self-set salaries and creativity

et al. 2020

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“…In the next step, the member of the charity promoted the organization's mission and goals, showing some pictures from previous activities and campaigns. Emphasizing that volunteers are supporting a good cause has recently been shown to be a significant positive determinant of their motivation to perform well (Carpenter and Gong 2016;Jeworrek and Mertins 2019b).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

In absence of money: a field experiment on volunteer work motivation

Mertins

Walter

2020

Exp Econ

Self Cite

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Although volunteers are a critical resource for non-profit organizations, little is known about how best to motivate them to work. A non-profit organization asked episodic volunteers to produce handmade greeting cards to sell at a fundraising event. By running a natural field experiment, we study the effect of motivating these volunteers through (a) the opportunity to vote on how the money that was raised would be spent and (b) the prospect of individual performance feedback. We find an economically and statistically significant positive effect of both tools on the quantity of work done, while the quality is mostly unaffected. Moreover, we observe significant gender differences in responsiveness to the treatments. While the prospect for feedback is more motivating to men, women respond more strongly to the opportunity to decide how the money would be spent. Empowerment seems to be a simple way to increase engagement for people with low enjoyment.

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Re-examining the effect of wage delegation: a replication study of Charness et al. (2012)

Niehoff,

Schreck

2024

J Bus Econ

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Experimental research has explored the effects of wage delegation on employee performance, with the pioneering attempt by (Charness et al., Am Econ Rev 102:2358–2379, 2012) in “The Hidden Advantage of Delegation: Pareto Improvements in a Gift Exchange Game”, published in the American Economic Review. We conducted a replication of their experiment for two main reasons: first, to validate the original findings that have influenced subsequent research, and second, to examine whether these results hold in contexts with reduced social proximity between workers and employers, a relevant issue due to the rise of remote work. Our online experiment, involving 410 participants, followed the original study’s design but used a different sample. We successfully replicated the main finding that wage delegation increases employee effort, though the effect was smaller and largely due to employees granting themselves higher wages. These results support the notion that with decreasing social proximity, formal controls increase in importance.

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Wage delegation in the field

Cited by 4 publications

References 59 publications

Self-set salaries and creativity

Self-set salaries and creativity

In absence of money: a field experiment on volunteer work motivation

Re-examining the effect of wage delegation: a replication study of Charness et al. (2012)

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