IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scotjp/v67y2020i5p539-550.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bonus incentives and team effort levels: Evidence from the “Field”

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Butler
  • Liam J. A. Lenten
  • Patrick Massey

Abstract

This study explores the effect of bonus incentive mechanisms with a focus on how such a scheme influences aggregate production levels of teams of workers, specifically. We identify this using data from a highly competitive setting in professional sport, which involves a unique tournament design rule in an elite European rugby competition. The modelling results demonstrate qualified evidence that introducing bonuses to encourage teams to score via the most‐difficult, highest‐reward mode, incentivizes teams to increase effort to earn the bonus, and without reducing production after the bonus is achieved.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Butler & Liam J. A. Lenten & Patrick Massey, 2020. "Bonus incentives and team effort levels: Evidence from the “Field”," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 67(5), pages 539-550, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:67:y:2020:i:5:p:539-550
    DOI: 10.1111/sjpe.12249
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12249
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/sjpe.12249?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    2. Oriana Bandiera & Iwan Barankay & Imran Rasul, 2010. "Social Incentives in the Workplace," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(2), pages 417-458.
    3. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2016. "Bonus Culture: Competitive Pay, Screening, and Multitasking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(2), pages 305-370.
    4. Thomas Cornelissen & Christian Dustmann & Uta Schönberg, 2017. "Peer Effects in the Workplace," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(2), pages 425-456, February.
    5. Schnedler Wendelin, 2011. "You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For: Bonuses, Perceived Income and Effort," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, February.
    6. Barton H. Hamilton & Jack A. Nickerson & Hideo Owan, 2003. "Team Incentives and Worker Heterogeneity: An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Teams on Productivity and Participation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 465-497, June.
    7. Oriana Bandiera & Iwan Barankay & Imran Rasul, 2009. "Social Connections and Incentives in the Workplace: Evidence From Personnel Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(4), pages 1047-1094, July.
    8. Giancarlo Moschini, 2010. "Incentives And Outcomes In A Strategic Setting: The 3‐Points‐For‐A‐Win System In Soccer," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 65-79, January.
    9. Guido Friebel & Matthias Heinz & Miriam Krueger & Nikolay Zubanov, 2017. "Team Incentives and Performance: Evidence from a Retail Chain," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(8), pages 2168-2203, August.
    10. Simon Burgess & Carol Propper & Marisa Ratto & StephanievonHinke KesslerScholder & Emma Tominey, 2010. "Smarter Task Assignment or Greater Effort: The Impact of Incentives on Team Performance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(547), pages 968-989, September.
    11. Jin-Hyuk Kim & Nick Vikander, 2015. "Team-Based Incentives in Problem-Solving Organizations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 262-286.
    12. Simon Burgess & Carol Propper & Marisa Ratto & Emma Tominey, 2017. "Incentives in the Public Sector: Evidence from a Government Agency," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 117-141, October.
    13. Oriana Bandiera & Iwan Barankay & Imran Rasul, 2013. "Team Incentives: Evidence From A Firm Level Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(5), pages 1079-1114, October.
    14. Bose, Arup & Pal, Debashis & Sappington, David E.M., 2010. "Asymmetric treatment of identical agents in teams," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 947-961, October.
    15. Eric D. Gould & Eyal Winter, 2009. "Interactions between Workers and the Technology of Production: Evidence from Professional Baseball," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 188-200, February.
    16. Simon Burgess & Carol Propper & Marisa Ratto & Emma Tominey, 2017. "Incentives in the Public Sector: Evidence from a Government Agency," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(605), pages 117-141.
    17. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 489-520.
    18. Liam J.A. Lenten & Jan Libich & Petr Stehlík, 2013. "Policy Timing and Footballers' Incentives," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(6), pages 629-655, December.
    19. repec:wly:soecon:v:81:2:y:2014:p:474-488 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Kendall, Graham & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2017. "When sports rules go awry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(2), pages 377-394.
    21. Bengt Holmström, 2017. "Pay for Performance and Beyond," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(7), pages 1753-1777, July.
    22. Vincent (Vincent Peter) Hogan & Patrick Massey, 2015. "Teams’ Reponses to Changed Incentives: Evidence from Rugby’s Six Nations Championship," Working Papers 201518, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    23. Liam J. A. Lenten & Niven Winchester, 2015. "Secondary Behavioural Incentives: Bonus Points and Rugby Professionals," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 91(294), pages 386-398, September.
    24. Bandiera, Oriana & Barankay, Iwan & Rasul, Imran, 2013. "Team incentives: evidence from a firm level," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 53141, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    25. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4727 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Adams, Christopher P., 2006. "Optimal team incentives with CES production," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 143-148, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Federico Fioravanti & Fernando Tohmé & Fernando Delbianco & Alejandro Neme, 2021. "Effort of rugby teams according to the bonus point system: a theoretical and empirical analysis," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 50(2), pages 447-474, June.
    2. Federico Fioravanti & Fernando Delbianco & Fernando Tohmé, 2023. "The relative importance of ability, luck and motivation in team sports: a Bayesian model of performance in the English Rugby Premiership," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 32(3), pages 715-731, September.
    3. Avila-Cano, Antonio & Owen, P. Dorian & Triguero-Ruiz, Francisco, 2023. "Measuring competitive balance in sports leagues that award bonus points, with an application to rugby union," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(2), pages 939-952.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Frederiksen, Anders & Hansen, Daniel Baltzer Schjødt & Flaherty Manchester, Colleen, 2022. "Does Group-Based Incentive Pay Lead To Higher Productivity? Evidence from a Complex and Interdependent Industrial Production Process," IZA Discussion Papers 14986, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Kelly, E.; & Propper, C.; & Zaranko, B.;, 2022. "Team composition and productivity: evidence from nursing teams in the English National Health Service," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 22/19, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    3. Josse Delfgaauw & Robert Dur & Oke Onemu & Joeri Sol, 2022. "Team Incentives, Social Cohesion, and Performance: A Natural Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(1), pages 230-256, January.
    4. David J. Cooper & Krista Saral & Marie Claire Villeval, 2021. "Why Join a Team?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(11), pages 6980-6997, November.
    5. Guido Friebel & Matthias Heinz & Miriam Krueger & Nikolay Zubanov, 2017. "Team Incentives and Performance: Evidence from a Retail Chain," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(8), pages 2168-2203, August.
    6. Gosnell, Greer & Metcalfe, Robert & List, John A, 2016. "A new approach to an age-old problem: solving externalities by incenting workers directly," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 84331, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Delfgaauw, Josse & Dur, Robert & Souverijn, Michiel, 2017. "Team Incentives, Task Assignment, and Performance: A Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 11228, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Theresa Chaudhry & Zunia Tirmazee & Umair Ayaz, 2023. "Experimental Evidence on Group-based Attendance Bonuses in Team Production," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 18(1), pages 90-110, April.
    9. Afridi, Farzana & Dhillon, Amrita & Sharma, Swati, 2015. "Social Networks and Labour Productivity: A Survey of Recent Theory and Evidence," Indian Economic Review, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, vol. 50(1), pages 25-42.
    10. Bauer, Kevin & Kosfeld, Michael & von Siemens, Ferdinand, 2021. "Incentives, Self-Selection, and Coordination of Motivated Agents for the Production of Social Goods," IZA Discussion Papers 14595, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Jason J Sandvik & Richard E Saouma & Nathan T Seegert & Christopher T Stanton, 2020. "Workplace Knowledge Flows," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(3), pages 1635-1680.
    12. Matthew McGinty, 2014. "Strategic Incentives in Teams: Implications of Returns to Scale," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(2), pages 474-488, October.
    13. Jose Uribe & Seth Carnahan & John Meluso & Jesse Austin‐Breneman, 2022. "How do managers evaluate individual contributions to team production? A theory and empirical test," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(12), pages 2577-2601, December.
    14. Selay Sahan & Euan Phimister, 2022. "Worker Incentives in the Banking Industry," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 61(2), pages 259-284, April.
    15. Heinz, Matthias & Khashabi, Pooyan & Zubanov, Nick & Kretschmer, Tobias & Friebel, Guido, 2017. "Heterogeneous Effects of Performance Pay with Market Competition: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment," CEPR Discussion Papers 12474, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Jeffrey Carpenter & Andrea Robbett & Prottoy A. Akbar, 2018. "Profit Sharing and Peer Reporting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(9), pages 4261-4276, September.
    17. Lagarde, Mylène & Riumallo Herl, Carlos, 2025. "Better together? Group incentives and the demand for prevention," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 125349, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Chadi, Adrian & Homolka, Konstantin, 2022. "Little Lies and Blind Eyes – Experimental Evidence on Cheating and Task Performance in Work Groups," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 122-159.
    19. Shaw, Kathryn, 2009. "Insider econometrics: A roadmap with stops along the way," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 607-617, December.
    20. Gall, Thomas & Hu, Xiaocheng & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2016. "Dynamic Incentive Effects of Team Formation: Experimental Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 10393, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:67:y:2020:i:5:p:539-550. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sesssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.