Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary In the context of a call centre, behavioural heterogeneity observed through employees shirking when reduced monitoring is introduced has important implications for the design and management of reward systems. Management needs to balance monitoring strategies needed to regulate opportunistic employees with strategies needed to sustain the motivation of the substantial fraction of employees disinclined to shirk. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Economic models of incentives in employment relationships are based on a specific theory of motivation: employees are "rational cheaters," who anticipate the consequences of their actions and shirk when the marginal benefits exceed costs. We investigate the "rational cheater model" by observing how experimentally induced variation in monitoring of telephone call center employees influences opportunism. A significant fraction of employees behave as the "rational cheater model" predicts. A substantial proportion of employees, however, do not respond to manipulations in the monitoring rate. This heterogeneity is related to variation in employee assessments of their general treatment by the employer.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/00028280260344498 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Are employees rational cheaters? Given an incentive pay arrangement, if monitoring is reduced will this lead to an increase in shirking, and which individuals are most likely to engage in opportunistic behaviour? Sample Trial population and sample selection A telephone marketing firm and its 16 geographically dispersed sites. Employees receive a base salary and a bonus for exceeding targets at all of these sites. Employees understand that some fraction of their calls are checked by audit. 4 sites were selected to have audit rates increased to 25% whereas, the rest were reduced from 10% to 5%. In order to keep the employees blinded to the experiment, a subsample was randomly drawn from the actual audits to be reported back to employees at the 4 sites with increased monitoring. Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups 4 call centres Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description At 14 of the company's 16 call centre sites, audit rates of calls made by employees was dropped from 10% to 5%. At 4 sites, the audit rate was increased to 25%, but the "observed" audit rate to employees and supervisors was held at 5% by randomly drawing a subsample of the actual audits made for reporting back. This manipulation of audit rates took place over 14 weeks. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Prior to the intervention, employees took a survey which collected data about employee perceptions concerning their job and their relationship with their employer, as well as demographic information. Weekly data were collected for all 16 sites for 60 weeks prior to the intervention. Variables include ratio of suspicious bad calls to good calls, audit rates, hours worked at each site each week, fraction of workers with eventual tenure, fraction of ours spent in outreach (making calls). Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Ratio of suspicious bad calls to good calls.</p> Results <p>A sizable fraction of employees behave in accordance with a "rational cheater model": employees respond to a reduction in monitoring by quickly and sharply increasing the rate at which they engage in cheating / shirking. However, many employees do not exploit reductions in monitoring to their own advantage. Evidence indicates that the employees who responded to reductions in monitoring tended to be those who perceived the employer as unfair or uncaring. In terms of the ratio of bad calls to good calls, the estimated difference in employee response between opportunistic employees and those not inclined to shirk, is 78%.</p> Intervention costs Not available. Cost benefit ratio Reference Nagin, D. S., Rebitzer, J. B., Sanders, S., & Taylor, L. J., 2002. 'Monitoring, Motivation, and Management: The Determinants of Opportunistic Behavior in a Field Experiment'. The American Economic Review, vol. 92(4), pages 850-873. Citation for use in academic references
