Purpose

There is a longstanding debate regarding the effectiveness of financial incentives in improving work performance. This study is motivated by seemingly conflicting theory and mixed research evidence, and advances the management accounting literature on pay-for-performance by examining the separate and joint effects of task attractiveness and monetary incentives on allocation of effort and on performance.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses an online, multi-period, mixed design experiment with two independent groups of participants who receive either incentive pay or flat pay to perform a multidimensional job. The job tasks differ in complexity and participants can choose how to distribute effort between tasks. Observations are taken across two periods.

Findings

If the complex task is initially viewed as attractive it becomes less attractive over time, while the attractiveness of the simple task is stable. Participants who receive flat pay and who find the complex task attractive spent more time on working on that task than those compensated with incentives. Incentives caused higher initial performance than flat pay among participants who find the complex task to be attractive, but the differential is transient; dissatisfaction with initial performance seemingly contribute to a decline in attractiveness and deterioration in performance.

Research limitations/implications

The results indicate that task attributes and personal preferences moderate the effects of incentives on performance and that further research is needed to examine strategies to mitigate spillover effects of deficient performance to subsequent periods. However, the findings may not be applicable to extremely complex work environments involving numerous tasks and/or group work.

Practical implications

Showing that incentives may have a positive but transitory effect on performance, because task attributes and personal preferences moderate the incentive-performance relationship, may have practical implications for hiring, job design and compensation systems design.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the literature on pay-for-performance by using a setting that better represents contemporary work environments than prior studies have and introduces choice over effort allocation. Additionally, we contribute to theory by showing that economics and psychology theories should be viewed as complements in investigating the intricate relationship between incentives and performance.

中文翻译：

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金钱激励对任务吸引力、努力和绩效的影响

目的

关于财务激励在提高工作绩效方面的有效性存在长期争论。本研究受到看似矛盾的理论和混合研究证据的推动，并通过检查任务吸引力和金钱激励对努力分配和绩效的单独和共同影响，推进了关于绩效薪酬的管理会计文献。

设计/方法/方法

本研究使用在线、多时段、混合设计实验，由两组独立的参与者组成，他们接受激励薪酬或固定薪酬来执行多维工作。工作任务的复杂性不同，参与者可以选择如何在任务之间分配工作量。观察跨越两个时期。

发现

如果复杂任务最初被视为有吸引力，那么随着时间的推移它会变得不那么有吸引力，而简单任务的吸引力是稳定的。获得固定工资并且发现复杂任务有吸引力的参与者在该任务上花费的时间比那些获得奖励的参与者更多。在发现复杂任务有吸引力的参与者中，激励导致初始绩效高于固定薪酬，但差异是短暂的；对初始表现的不满似乎会导致吸引力下降和表现恶化。

研究限制/影响

结果表明，任务属性和个人偏好缓和了激励对绩效的影响，需要进一步研究以检查减轻绩效不足对后续时期的溢出效应的策略。然而，研究结果可能不适用于涉及大量任务和/或团队工作的极其复杂的工作环境。

实际影响

表明激励可能对绩效产生积极但短暂的影响，因为任务属性和个人偏好调节了激励-绩效关系，可能对招聘、工作设计和薪酬体系设计具有实际意义。

原创性/价值

本文通过使用比之前的研究更能代表当代工作环境的设置，为有关按绩效付费的文献做出贡献，并介绍了对努力分配的选择。此外，我们通过表明经济学和心理学理论应被视为研究激励与绩效之间复杂关系的补充，从而为理论做出贡献。