Motivation through incentives: A cross-disciplinary review of the evidence

Abstract

Over the last decades, the accounting and control literature has featured much studying of and debate about the role and designing of incentives. Over the last year or so, the debate over incentives and bonuses has become a much more public one, as illustrated by the current public furor over bankers' bonuses and frequent calls to limit them and/or tax them more heavily. The public nature of the debate is new, but the emotional intensity is not; an intense emotionality has often characterized discussions of these subjects in print, as recently illustrated by a controversy between supporters and opponents of goal setting published in Academy of Management Perspectives.

This chapter tries to structure the debate by defining – and clarifying the interactions between – key components of the debate. I then review some – by no means all – of the evidence available in three streams of research: goal setting, self-determination theory, and economics. A surprisingly large number of commonalities emerge from this review. I then revisit in light of this review two accountability models I had introduced at a previous conference as well a forthcoming field study of the sophisticated approach developed by a successful multinational corporation.

Citation

Manzoni, J.-F. (2010), "Motivation through incentives: A cross-disciplinary review of the evidence", Epstein, M.J., Manzoni, J.-F. and Davila, A. (Ed.) Performance Measurement and Management Control: Innovative Concepts and Practices (Studies in Managerial and Financial Accounting, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 19-63. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3512(2010)0000020005