Paying for What Kind of Performance? Performance Pay and Multitasking in Mission-Oriented Jobs

Daniel Jones, Mirco Tonin and Michael Vlassopoulos

No 11674, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: multitasking; performance pay; prosocial motivation; sorting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 J45 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published - substantially revised version published in: Games and Economic Behavior , 2023, 142, 480-507

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Related works:
Working Paper: Paying for what kind of performance? Performance pay and multitasking in mission-oriented jobs (2018)
Working Paper: Paying for what kind of Performance? Performance Pay and Multitasking in Mission-Oriented Jobs (2018)
Working Paper: Paying for what kind of performance? Performance pay and multitasking in mission-oriented jobs (2018)
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