The Efficacy of Tournaments for Non-Routine Team Tasks

Arbeitspapier

Tournaments are often used to improve performance in innovation contexts. Tournaments provide monetary incentives but also render teams' identity and social-image concerns salient. We study the effects of tournaments on team performance in a non-routine task and identify the importance of these behavioral aspects. In a natural field experiment (n>1,700 participants), we vary the salience of team identity, social-image concerns, and whether teams face monetary incentives. Increased salience of team identity does not improve performance. Social-image motivates mainly the top-performing teams. Additional monetary incentives improve all teams' outcomes without crowding out teams' willingness to explore or perform similar tasks again.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 9189

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Field Experiments ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: General‡ ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Compensation Packages; Payment Methods ; Personnel Economics: Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
• Subject: team-work ; tournaments ; rankings ; incentives ; identity ; image concerns ; innovation ; exploration ; natural field experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Englmaier, Florian ; Grimm, Stefan ; Grothe, Dominik ; Schindler, David ; Schudy, Simeon
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/245370
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET