Paying for what kind of Performance? Performance Pay and Multitasking in Mission-Oriented Jobs

Arbeitspapier

How does pay-for-performance (P4P) impact productivity, multitasking, and the composition of workers in mission-oriented jobs? These are central issues in sectors like education or healthcare. We conduct a laboratory experiment, manipulating compensation and mission, to answer these questions. We find that P4P has positive effects on productivity on the incentivized dimension of effort and negative effects on the non-incentivized dimension for workers in non-mission-oriented treatments. In mission-oriented treatments, P4P generates minimal change on either dimension. Participants in the non-mission sector – but not in the mission-oriented treatments – sort on ability, with lower ability workers opting out of the P4P scheme.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 7156

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Personnel Economics: Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects ; Public Sector Labor Markets
• Subject: prosocial motivation ; performance pay ; multitasking ; sorting

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Jones, Daniel ; Tonin, Mirco ; Vlassopoulos, Michael
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/181356
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET