IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/aosoci/v64y2018icp1-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effects of tournament horizon and the percentage of winners on social comparisons and performance in multi-period competitions

Author

Listed:
  • Berger, Leslie
  • Libby, Theresa
  • Webb, Alan

Abstract

We examine the effects of two important tournament design features, tournament horizon and percentage of winners, on social comparisons and performance in a multi-period setting. Prior research has individually examined these two features, but has not examined their joint effects. Replicating prior research, we predict that a higher percentage of winners will result in better performance than a lower percentage of winners by inducing more social comparisons. We also predict that grand tournaments will result in better performance than repeated tournaments through their effects on the extent to which competitors will engage in social comparisons. We expect that relative to repeated tournaments, grand tournaments will encourage more social comparisons because the performance feedback provided to competitors will be more indicative of the likelihood of future period outcomes (i.e., winning or losing) than in a repeated tournament. We also examine the extent to which the percentage of winners moderates the strength of the predicted relations among tournament horizon, social comparisons and performance. Finally, we predict that in repeated tournaments using a higher percentage of winners will be more effective at sustaining effort in later periods but that these effects will be weaker for grand tournaments. Results from a laboratory experiment with 400 undergraduate student participants support these predictions. Moreover, we find no evidence that the percentage of winners influences the impact of tournament horizon on social comparisons or overall performance. We identify implications for theory and practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Berger, Leslie & Libby, Theresa & Webb, Alan, 2018. "The effects of tournament horizon and the percentage of winners on social comparisons and performance in multi-period competitions," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-16.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:64:y:2018:i:c:p:1-16
    DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2017.12.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368217301320
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.aos.2017.12.006?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Daniel Kahneman & Dan Lovallo, 1993. "Timid Choices and Bold Forecasts: A Cognitive Perspective on Risk Taking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 17-31, January.
    3. Brown, Douglas J. & Ferris, D. Lance & Heller, Daniel & Keeping, Lisa M., 2007. "Antecedents and consequences of the frequency of upward and downward social comparisons at work," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 59-75, January.
    4. Sheremeta, Roman M., 2010. "Experimental comparison of multi-stage and one-stage contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 731-747, March.
    5. Michael W. Browne & Robert Cudeck, 1992. "Alternative Ways of Assessing Model Fit," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 21(2), pages 230-258, November.
    6. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    7. Pablo Casas-Arce & F. Asís Martínez-Jerez, 2009. "Relative Performance Compensation, Contests, and Dynamic Incentives," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(8), pages 1306-1320, August.
    8. Klein, Howard J., 1991. "Further evidence on the relationship between goal setting and expectancy theories," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 230-257, August.
    9. Harbring, Christine & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2008. "How many winners are good to have?: On tournaments with sabotage," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 682-702, March.
    10. Tong, Kwok-kit & Leung, Kwok, 2002. "Tournament as a motivational strategy: Extension to dynamic situations with uncertain duration," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 399-420, June.
    11. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1986. "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 251-278, October.
    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. Li, Yelin & Reichert, Bernhard E. & Woods, Alex, 2024. "The interactive effects of performance evaluation leniency and performance measurement precision on employee effort and performance," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    2. Newman, Andrew H. & Tafkov, Ivo D. & Waddoups, Nathan J. & Xiong, Xiaomei Grazia, 2024. "The effect of reward frequency on performance under cash rewards and tangible rewards," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    3. Zhang, Kun & Yang, Xiaolan & Gao, Mei, 2023. "When to use tournament incentives? Evidence from an investment experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    4. Christoph Feichter & Isabella Grabner, 2020. "Empirische Forschung zu Management Control – Ein Überblick und neue Trends [Empirical Management Control Reserach—An Overview and Future Directions]," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 72(2), pages 149-181, June.
    5. Lisa-Marie Wibbeke & Maik Lachmann, 2020. "Psychology in management accounting and control research: an overview of the recent literature," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 275-328, September.

    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. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    2. Yan Chen & Peter Cramton & John A. List & Axel Ockenfels, 2021. "Market Design, Human Behavior, and Management," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(9), pages 5317-5348, September.
    3. Dutcher, E. Glenn & Balafoutas, Loukas & Lindner, Florian & Ryvkin, Dmitry & Sutter, Matthias, 2015. "Strive to be first or avoid being last: An experiment on relative performance incentives," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 39-56.
    4. Lindner, Florian & Dutcher, E. Glenn & Balafoutas, Loukas & Ryvkin, Dmitry & Sutter, Matthias, 2013. "Strive to be first and avoid being last: An experiment on relative performance incentives," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79885, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Loukas Balafoutas & E. Glenn Dutcher & Florian Lindner & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2017. "The Optimal Allocation Of Prizes In Tournaments Of Heterogeneous Agents," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 461-478, January.
    6. De Paola, Maria & Gioia, Francesca & Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2018. "The adverse consequences of tournaments: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 1-18.
    7. Klein, Arnd Heinrich & Schmutzler, Armin, 2021. "Incentives and motivation in dynamic contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 194-216.
    8. Shupp, Robert & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Schmidt, David & Walker, James, 2013. "Resource allocation contests: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 257-267.
    9. Werner Güth & René Levínský & Kerstin Pull & Ori Weisel, 2016. "Tournaments and piece rates revisited: a theoretical and experimental study of output-dependent prize tournaments," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 20(1), pages 69-88, March.
    10. Cui, Xuegang & Feltovich, Nick & Zhang, Kun, 2022. "Incentive schemes, framing, and market behaviour: Evidence from an asset-market experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 301-324.
    11. Hoffmann, Magnus & Kolmar, Martin, 2017. "Distributional preferences in probabilistic and share contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 120-139.
    12. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Matthews, Peter Hans & Tabb, Benjamin, 2016. "Progressive taxation in a tournament economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 64-72.
    13. Graff, Frederik & Grund, Christian & Harbring, Christine, 2021. "Competing on the Holodeck - The effect of virtual peers and heterogeneity in dynamic tournaments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    14. Roman Sheremeta, 2018. "Experimental Research on Contests," Working Papers 18-07, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    15. Llorente-Saguer, Aniol & Sheremeta, Roman M. & Szech, Nora, 2023. "Designing contests between heterogeneous contestants: An experimental study of tie-breaks and bid-caps in all-pay auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    16. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Patricia Esteve‐González & Anwesha Mukherjee, 2023. "Heterogeneity, leveling the playing field, and affirmative action in contests," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(3), pages 924-974, January.
    17. Lauber, Arne & March, Christoph & Sahm, Marco, 2023. "Optimal and fair prizing in sequential round-robin tournaments: Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 30-51.
    18. Kato, Takao & Shu, Pian, 2016. "Competition and social identity in the workplace: Evidence from a Chinese textile firm," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PA), pages 37-50.
    19. Curtis R. Price & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2015. "Endowment Origin, Demographic Effects, and Individual Preferences in Contests," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 597-619, September.
    20. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Roman M. Sheremeta & Theodore L. Turocy, 2012. "Overdissipation and Convergence in Rent-seeking Experiments: Cost structure and prize allocation rules," Working Papers 12-13, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.

    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:eee:aosoci:v:64:y:2018:i:c:p:1-16. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/aos .

    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.