Three essays on the drivers of employee motivation
In the last decade several surveys have suggested that monetary motivation is just one face of the diverse set of motivational drivers of employees' behavior, and sometimes it is not even the most powerful: indeed, they seem to be moved by different psychological motivations, such as peer motivation, the intrinsic desire to do a good job, recognition, and so on. Behavioral and experimental economics incorporate these psychological elements into the standard agency theory, and provide experimental evidence to support their relevance. The aim of this dissertation is to explore the effects on employees' behavior of two of these psychological forces: intrinsic motivation and solidarity towards peers. Chapter 1 is a review of the effects of the interaction between intrinsic motivation and other motivational forces, both external (such as external interventions, social context, and externally set goals) and internal (such as subject's identity and achievement motives). The laboratory experiment presented in Chapter 2 investigates the relation between intrinsic motivation, wage delegation, and performance, with a twofold aim: 1) testing whether subjects who are delegated their wage choice become more intrinsically motivated 2) exploring the different reactions to wage delegation of differently motivated workers. Chapter 3 reproduces the cash posters framework à la Homans (1953, 1954) in the laboratory, and it examines whether employees are moved also by solidarity concerns towards their coworkers.
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