Sabotage in Corporate Contests – An Experimental Analysis
- 16 October 2007
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Informa UK Limited in International Journal of the Economics of Business
- Vol. 14 (3), 367-392
- https://doi.org/10.1080/13571510701597445
Abstract
In corporate contests, employees compete for a prize. Ideally, contests induce employees to exert productive effort which increases their probability of winning. In many environments, however, employees can also improve their own ranking position by harming their colleagues. Such negative incentive effects of corporate contests are largely unexplored, which can partly be attributed to the fact that sabotaging behavior is almost unobservable in the field. In this study we analyze behavior in experimental contests with heterogeneous players who are able to mutually sabotage each other. We find that sabotaging behavior systematically varies with the composition of different types of contestants. Moreover, if the saboteur’s identity is revealed sabotage decreases while retaliation motives prevail. Our results promise to be valuable when designing corporate contests.Keywords
Other Versions
This publication has 28 references indexed in Scilit:
- Incentives in Tournaments with Endogenous Prize SelectionJournal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 2005
- Sabotage in Promotion TournamentsJournal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2003
- U-Type versus J-Type TournamentsJournal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 2002
- Sabotage in rent-seeking contestsJournal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2000
- Orchestrating Rent Seeking ContestsThe Economic Journal, 1999
- The Wage Policy of a FirmThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1994
- The Incentive Effects of Tournament Compensation SystemsAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1992
- Reactions to discrimination in an incentive pay compensation scheme: A game-theoretic approachOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1989
- Tournaments and Piece Rates: An Experimental StudyJournal of Political Economy, 1987
- Market Structure and InnovationThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1979