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How Many Winners Are Good to Have? On Tournaments with Sabotage

Author

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  • Harbring, Christine

    (RWTH Aachen University)

  • Irlenbusch, Bernd

    (University of Cologne)

Abstract

From an employer's perspective a tournament should induce agents to exert productive activities but refrain from destructive ones. We experimentally test the predictive power of a tournament model which suggests that – within a reasonable framework – productive and destructive activities are not influenced neither by the number of agents taking part in the tournament nor by the fraction of the winner prizes. Our results clearly confirm that sabotage in tournaments indeed occurs. While tournament size has virtually no effect on behavior, a balanced fraction of winner and loser prizes seems to particularly enhance productive activities.

Suggested Citation

  • Harbring, Christine & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2005. "How Many Winners Are Good to Have? On Tournaments with Sabotage," IZA Discussion Papers 1777, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1777
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    Cited by:

    1. Bevia Carmen & Corchón Luis C, 2006. "Rational Sabotage in Cooperative Production with Heterogeneous Agents," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-29, November.
    2. Harbring, Christine & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2004. "Incentives in Tournaments with Endogenous Prize Selection," IZA Discussion Papers 1340, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Uschi Backes-Gellner & Kerstin Pull, 2007. "Tournament Incentives and Contestant Heterogeneity: Empirical Evidence from the Organizational Practice," Working Papers 0075, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU).
    4. Schwieren, Christiane & Weichselbaumer, Doris, 2010. "Does competition enhance performance or cheating? A laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 241-253, June.
    5. Christine Harbring, 2006. "The effect of communication in incentive systems-an experimental study," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 333-353.
    6. Jeffrey Carpenter & Peter Hans Matthews & John Schirm, 2010. "Tournaments and Office Politics: Evidence from a Real Effort Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 504-517, March.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    experiments; personnel economics; relative performance evaluation; sabotage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

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