Motivating Teams: Private Feedback and Public Recognition at Work

Clara Anne Delavallade

No 9621, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Aside from money, what works best to incentivize teams? Using a randomized field experiment, this paper tests whether fixed-wage workers respond better to receiving private feedback on performance or to competing for public recognition. Female school feeding teams in 450 South African schools were randomly assigned to receiving (i) private feedback: information on performance and ranking using scorecards, (ii) public recognition: public ceremony award for top performers, (iii) both feedback and award, or (iv) no intervention. The analysis yields two main findings. First, while private feedback and public award are more effective when offered separately, receiving feedback on performance boosts teams’ effort more than public recognition. Second, image motivation crowds out intrinsic motivation, especially for low-ability teams. This suggests that providing performance feedback can be an effective policy for leveraging intrinsic motivation and improving service delivery, more so than mechanisms leveraging image motivation.

Keywords: Health Service Management and Delivery; Wages; Compensation&Benefits; Educational Sciences; Gender and Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-exp and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/57906161 ... ognition-at-Work.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:wbk:wbrwps:9621

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().