The Paradox of Performance Related Pay Systems: 'Why Do We Keep Adopting Them in the Face of Evidence that they Fail to Motivate?'

David Marsden

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper considers one of the paradoxes of incentive pay used in Britain's public services, namely that despite much evidence that it does not motivate employees, it continues to be widely used. It is argued that behind this evidence, there are significant examples in which its use has been associated with improved performance. A good part of this is to be explained by the way performance pay links pay and appraisal, and the pressure this puts on line managers to set clearer goals for their staff. There is also some evidence that the goal setting is the outcome of a form of integrative, or positive sum, negotiation between individual employees and their managers, and that it is not just 'top down'.

Keywords: pay for performance; public sector pay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J33 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp0946.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The paradox of performance related pay systems: ‘why do we keep adopting them in the face of evidence that they fail to motivate?’ (2009)
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:cep:cepdps:dp0946

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().