Workplace Incentives and Organizational Learning

Francesco Amodio and Miguel Martinez-Carrasco

No 15498, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper studies learning within organizations when incentives change. We use a simple principal-agent model to show how, in the presence of imperfect information over the shape of the production function, workers' effort choice changes over time as information is disclosed and processed. We also show that changing incentives can trigger this learning process. We test this prediction using personnel data from an egg production plant in Peru. Exploiting a sudden change in the contract parameters, we find that workers learn from each other over the shape of the production function. This adjustment process is costly for the firm.

Keywords: Organizational learning; Workplace incentives; Inputs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 D24 J24 J33 M11 M52 M54 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15498 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Workplace Incentives and Organizational Learning (2023)
Working Paper: Workplace Incentives and Organizational Learning (2020)
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:cpr:ceprdp:15498

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15498

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().