Treating Equals Unequally: Incentives in Teams, Workers' Motivation, and Production Technology

Sebastian Goerg, Sebastian Kube and Ro'i Zultan

Journal of Labor Economics, 2010, vol. 28, issue 4, 747-772

Abstract: The importance of fair and equal treatment of workers is at theheart of the debate in organizational management. In this regard,we study how reward schemes and production technologies affect effort provision in teams. Our experimental results demonstrate that unequal rewards can potentially increase productivity by facilitating coordination and that the effect strongly interacts with the exact shape of the production function. Taken together, our data highlight the relevance of the production function for organization construction and suggest that equal treatment of equals is neither a necessary nor a sufficient prerequisite for eliciting high performance in teams. (c) 2010 by The University of Chicago. Allrights reserved.

Date: 2010
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Working Paper: Treating Equals Unequally: Incentives in Teams, Workers' Motivation and Production Technology (2009)
Working Paper: Treating Equals Unequally - Incentives in Teams, Workers' Motivation and Production Technology (2007)
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