The Pros and Cons of Workplace Tournaments

Roman Sheremeta

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Tournaments are commonly used in the workplace to determine promotion, assign bonuses, and motivate personal development. Tournament-based contracts can be very effective in eliciting high effort, often outperforming other compensation contracts, but they can also have negative consequences for both managers and workers. The benefits and disadvantages of workplace tournaments have been identified in theoretical, empirical, and experimental research over the past several decades. Based on these findings, I provide suggestions and guidelines for when it might be beneficial to use tournaments in the workplace.

Keywords: tournaments; contests; competition; contracts; workplace (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 C8 C9 J4 J7 L1 L2 M1 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-cta
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published in IZA World of Labor 302 (2016): pp. 1-10

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/74859/1/MPRA_paper_74859.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Pros and Cons of Workplace Tournaments (2017)
Journal Article: The pros and cons of workplace tournaments (2016)
Working Paper: The Pros and Cons of Workplace Tournaments (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:74859

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