Knowing that You Matter, Matters! The Interplay of Meaning, Monetary Incentives, and Worker Recognition

Michael Kosfeld, Susanne Neckermann and Xiaolan Yang ()
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Xiaolan Yang: Zhejiang University

No 8055, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We manipulate workers' perceived meaning of a job in a field experiment. Half of the workers are informed that their job is important, the other half are told that their job is of no relevance. Results show that workers exert more effort when meaning is high, corroborating previous findings on the relationship between meaning and work effort. We then compare the effect of meaning to the effect of monetary incentives and of worker recognition via symbolic awards. We also look at interaction effects. While meaning outperforms monetary incentives, the latter have a robust positive effect on performance that is independent of meaning. In contrast, meaning and recognition have largely similar effects but interact negatively. Our results are in line with image-reward theory (Bénabou and Tirole 2006) and suggest that meaning and worker recognition operate via the same channel, namely image seeking.

Keywords: worker recognition; monetary incentives; meaning; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J33 M12 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2014-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cta, nep-exp, nep-ger, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published - published as 'The Effects of Financial and Recognition Incentives across Work contexts: The Rolel of Meaning' in: Economic Inquiry, 2017, 55 (1), 237 - 247

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Related works:
Working Paper: Knowing that You Matter, Matters! The Interplay of Meaning, Monetary Incentives, and Worker Recognition (2014)
Working Paper: Knowing that you matter, matters! The interplay of meaning, monetary incentives, and worker recognition (2014)
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