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...

We manipulate workers' perceived meaning of a job in a field experiment. Half of the workers are informed that their job is important, the other half are told that their job is of no relevance. Results show that workers exert more effort when meaning is high, corroborating previous findings on...

We study the impact of status and social recognition on worker performance in a field experiment. In collaboration with an international non-governmental organization, we hired students to work on a database project. Students in the award treatment were offered a congratulatory card honoring the...

Awards - widespread in the corporate sector and elsewhere - are motivators that derive their value from non-pecuniary concerns such as status and self-image. Quasi-experimental panel data from the call center of a large international bank allow us to estimate the causal impact on effort when...

We manipulate workers' perceived meaning of a job in a field experiment. Half of the workers are informed that their job is important, the other half are told that their job is of no relevance. Results show that workers exert more effort when meaning is high, corroborating previous findings on...

Awards in the form of orders, decorations, prizes, and titles are ubiquitous in monarchies and republics, private organizations, not-for-profit, and profit-oriented firms. This paper argues that awards present a unique combination of different stimuli and that they are distinct and unlike other...

Laut ökonomischer Standardtheorie sollen Arbeitsanreize mittels Geldzahlungen vermittelt werden. Materielle Anreize in nicht-monetärer Form sind demgegenüber weniger effizient, sind aber dennoch weit verbreitet. Auszeichnungen in Form von Titeln, Orden, Medaillen und Ehrungen (Preisen) wurden...

Non-monetary incentives in the form of awards have so far escaped the attention of economists despite their widespread use. This paper presents an experiment conducted online at IBM to assess the impact of these kinds of extrinsic incentives. Introducing a hypothetical award has statistically...

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....

Awards—widespread in the corporate sector and elsewhere—are motivators that derive their value from non-pecuniary concerns such as status and self-image. Quasi-experimental panel data from the call center of a large international bank allow us to estimate the causal impact on effort when...