Academics Appreciate Awards - A New Aspect of Incentives in Research

This paper analyzes awards as a means of motivation prevalent in the scientific community, but so far neglected in the economic literature on incentives, and discusses their relationship to monetary compensation. Awards are better suited than performance pay to reward scientific tasks, which are typically of a vague nature. They derive their value, for instance, from signaling research talent to outsiders. Awards should therefore be taken seriously as a means of motivating research that may complement, or even substitute for, monetary incentives. While we discuss awards in the context of academia, our conclusions apply to other principal-agent settings as well.awards, money, incentives, academia, research

Awards: A Disregarded Source of Motivation

Awards are prevalent in all societies and at all times. So far, however, they have escaped the attention of economists. This paper presents a first analysis of awards, distinguishing them from purely monetary forms of rewards. Additionally, popular notions about the use and prevalence of awards are addressed with descriptive statistics from the International Who's Who.awards, rewards, incentives

Awards as Signals

Awards are widespread in all countries and are prevalent both in the public sphere and in the private sector. This paper argues, and empirically supports, that awards serve public functions and economists should take them seriously. Using a unique cross-country data set, we suggest that awards serve as signals. Awards are more prevalent the more difficult the position and status of an individual is to observe due to an anonymous and globalized setting.awards, signals, status, anonymity, globalization

What is an Award Worth? An Econometric Assessment of the Impact of Awards on Employee Performance

Behavioral economics documents the importance of status and self-image concerns in the workplace, but is largely silent about how to instrumentalize them to induce effort. Awards - widespread in the corporate sector and elsewhere - are motivators that derive their value from such social concerns. Panel data from the call center of a large international bank allow us to estimate the impact of receiving an award on effort. The performance of winners proves to be significantly higher than that of comparable non-recipients after the award has been presented. This increase in work effort is sizeable, robust, and not driven by reverse causation.awards, motivation, non-monetary compensation, event-study, incentives

Auszeichnungen: Ein vernachlässigter Anreiz

The standard principal agent model considers monetary incentives only. It is assumed that money is more efficient than other forms of material, nonmonetary compensation. Awards in the form of titles, orders, medals and honors ( prizes) - though almost omnipresent - have so far escaped the attention of economists. They present extrinsic, non-monetary incentives that operate through the innate desire of human beings for recognition and status. In this article, we analyse the differences between monetary incentives and awards: in general, awards arecheap, lead to interpersonal relationships, are not directly related to performance and have a signalling value. In addition, they support intrinsic motivation, may increase social welfare and are exempt from taxation. Awards present an important additional instrument to be considered in principal agent theory. In many contexts they are superior to monetary compensatio

Awards at work

Social incentives like employee awards are widespread in the corporate sector and may be important instruments for solving agency problems. To date, we have little understanding of their effect on behavior. Unique panel data from the call center of a Fortune 500 financial services provider allow us to estimate the impact of awards on performance. Winning an award for voluntary work behaviors significantly increases subsequent core call center performance. The effect is short-lived, mainly driven by underperforming agents, and is reflected mostly in dimensions of the job that are hard to observe. We discuss various theories that could explain the effect

Employee recognition and performance: a field experiment

This paper reports the results from a controlled field experiment designed to investigate the causal effect of public recognition on employee performance. We hired more than 300 employees to work on a three-hour data-entry task. In a random sample of work groups, workers unexpectedly received recognition after two hours of work. We find that recognition increases subsequent performance substantially, and particularly so when recognition is exclusively provided to the best performers. Remarkably, workers who did not receive recognition are mainly responsible for this performance increase. This result is consistent with workers having a preference for conformity