When job performance is all relative: how family motivation energizes effort and compensates for intrinsic motivation

Supporting one's family is a major reason why many people work, yet surprisingly little research has examined the implications of family motivation. Drawing on theories of prosocial motivation and action identification, we propose that family motivation increases job performance by enhancing energy and reducing stress, and it is especially important when intrinsic motivation is lacking. Survey and diary data collected across multiple time points in a Mexican maquiladora generally support our model. Specifically, we find that family motivation enhances job performance when intrinsic motivation is low—in part by providing energy, but not by reducing stress. We conclude that supporting a family provides a powerful source of motivation that can boost performance in the workplace, offering meaningful implications for research on motivation and the dynamics of work and family engagement

Believe Me, You are (not) that Bad

This paper studies the effect of incentive schemes incorporating status classes on workers’ performance. I focus on performance comparisons between similarly skilled workers that belong to different status classes. A theoretical framework predicts that, under certain conditions, low ability workers attain high performance when they are assigned to a high rather than a low status class, and that high ability workers achieve high performance irrespective of the received status. These predictions are tested in a laboratory setting, where subjects are randomly assigned to a high status or a low status condition and constant performance feedback is provided. The experimental data support both predictions: low ability subjects assigned to the high status condition outperform their low status counterparts by 0.53 standard deviations in a cognitively challenging task, and high ability subjects display high performance outcomes in both status classes. Moreover, I explore the subjects’ beliefs about performance as a mechanism to explain these results. I find that low ability subjects assigned to the high status exhibit performance targets that were as high as those elicited by high ability participants. This suggests that these workers used status to believe that they were good performers, and performed accordingly