Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP16360
Authors: Florian Englmaier; Stefan Grimm; Dominik Grothe; David Schindler; Simeon Schudy
Abstract: Tournaments are often used to improve performance in innovation contexts. Tournaments provide monetary incentives but also render teams' identity and social-image concerns salient. We study the effects of tournaments on team performance in a non-routine task and identify the importance of these behavioral aspects. In a natural field experiment (n > 1,700 participants), we vary the salience of team identity, social-image concerns, and whether teams face monetary incentives. Increased salience of team identity does not improve performance. Social-image motivates mainly the top-performing teams. Additional monetary incentives improve all teams' outcomes without crowding out teams' willingness to explore or perform similar tasks again.
Keywords: team work; tournaments; rankings; incentives; identity; image concerns; innovation; exploration; natural field experiment
JEL Codes: C93; D90; J24; J33; M52
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| increased salience of team identity (Z22) | team performance (M54) |
| public ranking (A14) | team performance (M54) |
| monetary prize (E42) | team performance (M54) |
| image concerns (Y90) | team performance (M54) |