Do incentive systems spur work motivation of inventors in high tech firms? A group-based perspective

Nathalie Lazaric and Alain Raybaut

Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2014, vol. 24, issue 1, 135-157

Abstract: In this paper, we explore with a model the potential tensions between the incentive system of groups of inventors and knowledge diversity in a high tech firm. We show that, when all groups are rewarded and able to interact freely with their peers, extrinsic and intrinsic motives are mutually self-reinforcing, leading to crowding in effects. As a result, the level of created knowledge increases in each group, reinforcing the diversity of the firm’s knowledge base. By contrast, competitive rewards and constrained autonomy are likely to produce motivating effects in a small number of groups, limiting knowledge creation to the firm’s core competencies. In this case, the firm can suffer from crowding out effects by the other groups, leading eventually to the extinction of creation in their fields and reduced diversity in the long run. The results are illustrated with empirical findings from a case study of a French high tech firm. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Keywords: Work motivation; Groups of inventors; Knowledge creation; Knowledge diversity; O31; O32; L20; D83; J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00191-013-0336-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Incentive Systems Spur Work Motivations of Inventors in High-Tech Firms a Group-Based Perspective (2014)
Working Paper: Do Incentive Systems Spur Work Motivation of Inventors in High Tech Firms ? A Group-Based Perspective (2013)
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:spr:joevec:v:24:y:2014:i:1:p:135-157

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/191/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00191-013-0336-2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Evolutionary Economics is currently edited by Uwe Cantner, Elias Dinopoulos, Horst Hanusch and Luigi Orsenigo

More articles in Journal of Evolutionary Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().