[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/aareco/2003_014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Group Incentives in an Indian Firm - Evidence from Payroll Data

Author

Listed:
  • Bhattacherjee, Debashish

    (Department of Economics, Aarhus School of Business)

Abstract
This paper estimates the effects of group incentives on productivity, pay and employment in a large unionised firm in India. Using plant-level monthly time series data from the payroll office for the period 1985-95, and controlling for both (plant) fixed effects and (contract) time effects, the paper provides econometric evidence on the effectiveness of both the level and intensity of incentive pay on the outcome measures. In addition, the relative performance of two types of group incentives defined on the basis of group size is also analysed. At the firm level, the results generally confirm predictions from theory that productivity returns to centives are non-linear and concave in shape and that the effectiveness of incentives is decreasing in group size. I argue that the latter is most likely due to the lessening of the free-rider problem and the increased effectiveness of peer/mutual monitoring associated with smaller groups. The results also point to a negative relationship between the level of incentives and employment over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhattacherjee, Debashish, 2003. "The Effects of Group Incentives in an Indian Firm - Evidence from Payroll Data," Working Papers 03-14, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:aareco:2003_014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://130.226.203.32/fbspretrieve/290/0003140.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sonia R. Bhalotra, 1998. "The Puzzle of Jobless Growth in Indian Manufacturing," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 60(1), pages 5-32, February.
    2. Canice Prendergast, 1999. "The Provision of Incentives in Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 7-63, March.
    3. George Baker & Michael Gibbs & Bengt Holmstrom, 1994. "The Wage Policy of a Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 921-955.
    4. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 2004. "Can Labor Regulation Hinder Economic Performance? Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 91-134.
    5. Nalbantian, Haig R & Schotter, Andrew, 1997. "Productivity under Group Incentives: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 314-341, June.
    6. Casey Ichniowski & Kathryn Shaw, 2003. "Beyond Incentive Pay: Insiders' Estimates of the Value of Complementary Human Resource Management Practices," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 155-180, Winter.
    7. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    8. Kandel, Eugene & Lazear, Edward P, 1992. "Peer Pressure and Partnerships," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(4), pages 801-817, August.
    9. Knez, Marc & Simester, Duncan, 2001. "Firm-Wide Incentives and Mutual Monitoring at Continental Airlines," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(4), pages 743-772, October.
    10. William N. Cooke, 1994. "Employee Participation Programs, Group-Based Incentives, and Company Performance: A Union-Nonunion Comparison," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 47(4), pages 594-609, 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. 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.
    2. Gill, David & Prowse, Victoria & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2013. "Cheating in the workplace: An experimental study of the impact of bonuses and productivity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 120-134.
    3. repec:dau:papers:123456789/12197 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Doucouliagos, Chris & Laroche, Patrice & Kruse, Douglas L. & Stanley, T. D., 2018. "Where Does Profit Sharing Work Best? A Meta-Analysis on the Role of Unions, Culture, and Values," IZA Discussion Papers 11617, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Vera Brenčič, 2015. "Employers' Efforts to Deter Shirking in Teams: Evidence from Job Vacancies," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 29(1), pages 52-78, March.
    6. Rai, Soumi, 2012. "Human resource management and labour relations in the Indian industrial sector," Discussion Papers, Research Group Globalization, Work, and Production SP III 2012-301, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    7. Kshitija Dixit & Rupayan Pal, 2010. "The impact of group incentives on performance of small firms: Hausman-Taylor estimates," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(6), pages 403-414.
    8. Shaw, Kathryn, 2009. "Insider econometrics: A roadmap with stops along the way," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 607-617, December.

    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. Román, Francisco J., 2009. "An analysis of changes to a team-based incentive plan and its effects on productivity, product quality, and absenteeism," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 589-618, July.
    2. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Michael Waldman, 2012. "Theory and Evidence in Internal LaborMarkets [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    4. Edward P. Lazear, 1995. "Personnel Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121883, April.
    5. Christophe Lemiére & Gaute Torsvik & Ottar Mæstad & Christopher H. Herbst & Kenneth L. Leonard, 2013. "Evaluating the Impact of Results-Based Financing on Health Worker Performance: Theory, Tools and Variables to Inform an Impact Evaluation," Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Discussion Paper Series 98269, The World Bank.
    6. Mathieu Lefebvre & Lucie Martin-Bonnel de Longchamp, 2022. "Knowledge acquisition or incentive to foster coordination? A real-effort weak-link experiment with craftsmen," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 6(S1), pages 93-107, July.
    7. Adams, Christopher P., 2006. "Optimal team incentives with CES production," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 143-148, July.
    8. De Paola, Maria & Gioia, Francesca & Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2019. "Free-riding and knowledge spillovers in teams: The role of social ties," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 74-90.
    9. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    10. Tat Y. Chan & Jia Li & Lamar Pierce, 2014. "Compensation and Peer Effects in Competing Sales Teams," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(8), pages 1965-1984, August.
    11. Jeffrey Carpenter & Andrea Robbett & Prottoy A. Akbar, 2018. "Profit Sharing and Peer Reporting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(9), pages 4261-4276, September.
    12. Sebastian J. Goerg & Sebastian Kube & Ro'i Zultan, 2010. "Treating Equals Unequally: Incentives in Teams, Workers' Motivation, and Production Technology," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(4), pages 747-772, October.
    13. Ann Bartel & Brianna Cardiff-Hicks & Kathryn Shaw, 2013. "Compensation Matters: Incentives for Multitasking in a Law Firm," NBER Working Papers 19412, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Richard B. Freeman & Douglas L. Kruse & Joseph R. Blasi, 2010. "Worker Responses to Shirking under Shared Capitalism," NBER Chapters, in: Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-based Stock Options, pages 77-103, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Gjedrem, William Gilje & Kvaløy, Ola, 2020. "Relative performance feedback to teams," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    16. Bruce A. Rayton, 2010. "Labour Economics and Human Resource Management," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 22, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Edward P. Lazear & Paul Oyer, 2012. "Personnel Economics [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    18. Bayo-Moriones, Alberto & Galdon-Sanchez, Jose Enrique & Martinez-de-Morentin, Sara, 2024. "Complements or Substitutes? Examining the Relationship between Teamwork and Selection Intensity," IZA Discussion Papers 16876, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Abeler, Johannes & Altmann, Steffen & Goerg, Sebastian J. & Kube, Sebastian & Wibral, Matthias, 2011. "Equity and Efficiency in Multi-Worker Firms: Insights from Experimental Economics," IZA Discussion Papers 5727, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Bernd J. Frick & Ute Goetzen & Robert Simmons, 2013. "The Hidden Costs of High-Performance Work Practices: Evidence from a Large German Steel Company," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 66(1), pages 198-224, January.
    21. Thomas Cornelissen & John Heywood & Uwe Jirjahn, 2014. "Reciprocity and Profit Sharing: Is There an Inverse U-shaped Relationship?," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 205-225, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Group Incentives; Compensation; Free Riding; Peer Monitoring; Trade Unions; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:aareco:2003_014. 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: Helle Vinbaek Stenholt (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nihhadk.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.