Tournament Incentives in the Field: Gender Differences in the Workplace
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper 09-069/1
31 Pages Posted: 6 Aug 2009
There are 2 versions of this paper
Tournament Incentives in the Field: Gender Differences in the Workplace
Tournament Incentives in the Field: Gender Differences in the Workplace
Date Written: August 4, 2009
Abstract
We ran a field experiment in a Dutch retail chain consisting of 128 stores. In a random sample of these stores, we introduced short-term sales competitions among subsets of stores. We find that sales competitions have a large effect on sales growth, but only in stores where the store's manager and a large fraction of the employees have the same gender. Remarkably, results are alike for sales competitions with and without monetary rewards, suggesting a high symbolic value of winning a tournament. Lastly, despite the substantial variation in team size, we find no evidence for free-riding.
Keywords: field experiment, gender differences, competition, sales contests, awards
JEL Classification: C93, J16, M52
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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