Team Incentives, Social Cohesion, and Performance: A Natural Field Experiment

Josse Delfgaauw, Robert Dur, Oke Onemu () and Joeri Sol ()
Additional contact information
Oke Onemu: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), 53113 Bonn, Germany
Joeri Sol: Tinbergen Institute, 1082 MS Amsterdam, Netherlands; University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Business School, 1018 TV Amsterdam, Netherlands

Management Science, 2022, vol. 68, issue 1, 230-256

Abstract: We conducted a field experiment in a Dutch retail chain of 122 stores to study the interaction between team incentives, team social cohesion, and team performance. Theory predicts that the effect of team incentives on team performance increases with the team’s social cohesion because social cohesion reduces free-riding behavior. In addition, team incentives may lead to more coworker support or to higher peer pressure and thereby, can affect the team’s social cohesion. We introduced short-term team incentives in a randomly selected subset of stores and measured for all stores, both before and after the intervention, the team’s sales performance and the team’s social cohesion as well as coworker support and peer pressure. The average treatment effect of the team incentive on sales is 1.5 percentage points, which does not differ significantly from zero. In line with theory, the estimated treatment effect increases with social cohesion as measured before the intervention. Social cohesion itself is not affected by the team incentives.

Keywords: field experiment; team incentives; social cohesion; peer pressure; coworker support; sales performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3901 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Team Incentives, Social Cohesion, and Performance: A Natural Field Experiment (2020)
Working Paper: Team Incentives, Social Cohesion, and Performance: A Natural Field Experiment (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:68:y:2022:i:1:p:230-256

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().