The effect of monetary incentives on task attractiveness, effort and performance

Purpose There is a longstanding debate regarding the effectiveness of financial incentives in improving work performance. This study is motivated by seemingly conflicting theory and mixed research evidence, and advances the management accounting literature on pay-for-performance by examining the separate and joint effects of task attractiveness and monetary incentives on allocation of effort and on performance. Design/methodology/approach This study uses an online, multi-period, mixed design experiment with two independent groups of participants who receive either incentive pay or flat pay to perform a multidimensional job. The job tasks differ in complexity and participants can choose how to distribute effort between tasks. Observations are taken across two periods. Findings If the complex task is initially viewed as attractive it becomes less attractive over time, while the attractiveness of the simple task is stable. Participants who receive flat pay and who find the complex task attractive spent more time on working on that task than those compensated with incentives. Incentives caused higher initial performance than flat pay among participants who find the complex task to be attractive, but the differential is transient; dissatisfaction with initial performance seemingly contribute to a decline in attractiveness and deterioration in performance. Research limitations/implications The results indicate that task attributes and personal preferences moderate the effects of incentives on performance and that further research is needed to examine strategies to mitigate spillover effects of deficient performance to subsequent periods. However, the findings may not be applicable to extremely complex work environments involving numerous tasks and/or group work. Practical implications Showing that incentives may have a positive but transitory effect on performance, because task attributes and personal preferences moderate the incentive-performance relationship, may have practical implications for hiring, job design and compensation systems design. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature on pay-for-performance by using a setting that better represents contemporary work environments than prior studies have and introduces choice over effort allocation. Additionally, we contribute to theory by showing that economics and psychology theories should be viewed as complements in investigating the intricate relationship between incentives and performance.