The Spillover Effects of Monitoring: A Field Experiment

Michèle Belot and Marina Schroder

Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series from Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh

Abstract: We provide field experimental evidence of the effects of monitoring in a context where productivity is multi-dimensional and only one dimension is monitored and incentivised. We hire students to do a job for us. The job consists of identifying euro coins. We study the effects of monitoring and penalising mistakes on work quality, and evaluate spillovers on non-incentivised dimensions of productivity (punctuality and theft). We find that monitoring improves work quality only if incentives are large, but reduces punctuality substantially irrespectively of the size of incentives. Monitoring does not affect theft, with ten per cent of participants stealing overall. Our setting also allows us to disentangle between possible theoretical mechanisms driving the adverse effects of monitoring. Our findings are supportive of a reciprocity mechanism, whereby workers retaliate for being distrusted.

Keywords: counterproductive behaviour; monitoring; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J24 J30 M42 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lab
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http://www.econ.ed.ac.uk/papers/id238_esedps.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: The Spillover Effects of Monitoring: A Field Experiment (2016)
Working Paper: The Spillover Effects of Monitoring: A Field Experiment (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:edn:esedps:238

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