Feedback and Motivation in Dynamic Tournaments
Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Vol. 19, Issue 3, pp. 733-769, Fall 2010
36 Pages Posted: 21 Apr 2005 Last revised: 14 Oct 2015
Date Written: June 2009
Abstract
We investigate the choice to conduct interim performance evaluations in a dynamic tournament. When a worker's ability does not influence the marginal benefit of effort, the choice depends on the shape of the cost of effort function. When effort and ability are complementary, feedback has several competing effects: it informs workers about their relative position in the tournament (evaluation effect) as well as their relative productivity (motivation effect) and it creates signal-jamming incentives to exert effort prior to the performance evaluation. These effects suggest a trade-off of performance feedback between evaluation and motivation which is in accordance with organizational behavior research and performance appraisal practices.
Keywords: Feedback, Motivation, Tournaments, Interim Evaluation
JEL Classification: M12, M51
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Feedback and Incentives: Experimental Evidence
By Tor Eriksson, Anders Poulsen, ...
-
Feedback and Incentives: Experimental Evidence
By Tor Eriksson, Anders Poulsen, ...
-
Deception and Incentives: How Dishonesty Undermines Effort Provision
By Florian Ederer and Ernst Fehr
-
By Ghazala Azmat and Nagore Iriberri
-
Information Disclosure in Multistage Tournaments
By Maria Goltsman and Arijit Mukherjee
-
Feedback in Tournaments Under Commitment Problems: Theory and Experimental Evidence
By Oliver Gürtler and Christine Harbring
-
By Alwine Mohnen and Kathrin Manthei