We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Should Managers Use Team-Based Contests?
- Authors
Hua Chen; Lim, Noah
- Abstract
When designing contests to motivate employees, should managers organize employees to compete in teams or as individuals? We develop a behavioral economics model that shows that if contestants are averse to being responsible for the team's loss, a team-based (TB) contest can yield higher effort than an individual-based (IB) contest. This prediction is contrary to those of standard economics models, which favor IB contests over TB contests. We test the competing predictions using laboratory economics experiments. The results show that when contestants do not know each other, average effort levels in the TB and IB contests are not different. When contestants are allowed to socialize with potential teammates before making effort decisions, TB contests yield higher effort relative to IB contests. We also show that the relative efficacy of TB contests is driven by contestants' aversion to letting their team down.
- Subjects
EMPLOYEE motivation; EMPLOYEE competitive behavior; LABOR incentives; GOAL setting in personnel management; BEHAVIORAL economics; MANAGEMENT of teams in the workplace
- Publication
Management Science, 2013, Vol 59, Issue 12, p2823
- ISSN
0025-1909
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1287/mnsc.2013.1743