Helping and sharing behaviors - the essence of team work and organizational success - are to a great part intrinsically motivated. How can organizations influence intrinsic motivation in a predictable way? Different research approaches give different answers: The situationist approach suggests...

There is a controversy about the finding that performance-contingent rewards undermine intrinsic motivation. While standard economics states that pay-for-performance increases work efforts, psychological economics counter that it sometimes weakens work efforts. We show both predictions are valid...

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...

This paper argues that the ?Economics of Crime? concentrates too much on punishment as a policy to fight crime, which is unwise for several reasons. There are important instances in which punishment simply cannot reduce crime. Several feasible alternatives to punishment exist, such as offering...

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....

Corporate scandals, reflected in excessive management compensation and fraudulent accounts, cause considerable damage. Agency theory's insistence on linking the compensation of managers and directors as closely as possible to firm performance is a major reason for these scandals. They cannot be...