Related Papers
Creativity and Financial Incentives
Daniela Grieco
Creativity is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon with tremendous economics importance. Yet, despite this importance, there is very little work on the topic in the economics literature. In this paper, we consider the effect of incentives on creativity. We present a first series of experiments on individual creativity where subjects face creativity tasks where, in one case, ex-ante goals and constraints are imposed on their answers, and in the other case no restrictions apply. The effects of financial incentives in stimulating creativity in both types of tasks is then tested, together with the impact of personal features like risk and ambiguity aversion. Our findings show that, in general, financial incentives affect “closed” (constrained) creativity, but do not facilitate “open” (unconstrained) creativity. However, in the latter case incentives do play a role for ambiguity-averse agents, who tend to be significantly less creative and seem to need extrinsic motivation to exert effort in a task whose odds of success they don’t know. The second set of experiments aims at exploring group creativity in contexts where corporate culture promotes cooperation or competition among group members. Our results show that, in the case of closed tasks, financial incentives and collectivist attitudes foster creativity, but only with cooperative corporate culture.
Quantity, Quality and Originality: The Effects of Incentives on Creativity
2016 •
Katharina Laske
We introduce a novel experimental design in which creativity is incentivized and measured along three dimensions: quantity, quality and originality of ideas. We implement piece rate incentives for quantity alone, quantity in combination with quality and quantity in combination with originality and compare the results to a baseline with a fixed wage. We find that incentives significantly affect the quantity and average quality of ideas, but not the average originality. Incentives for both quantity and originality perform best in fostering innovative ideas.
Individual Creativity, Ex-ante Goals and Financial Incentives
2013 •
Gary Charness
Abstract: Creativity is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon that has hardly been considered byeconomists, despite a great deal of economic importance. This paper presents a series ofexperiments where subjects face creativity tasks where, in one case, ex-ante goals and constraintsare imposed on their answers, and in the other case no restrictions apply. The effects of financialincentives in stimulating creativity in both types of tasks is then tested, together with the impactof personal features like risk and ambiguity aversion. Our ...
A survey on experimental elicitation of creativity in economics
2021 •
Michela Chessa, patrick llerena
The interplay between individual creative ability and the way to enhance it – through monetary and nonmonetary incentives – is an issue with tremendous potential for economic analysis. In this survey, we dwell into the issue by focusing on the methodological advantages of economic experiments. We provide a review of the literature in experimental economics on creativity, identifying six main directions of analysis. Namely, the impact on creativity of: (1) low vs high monetary incentives, (2) the interplay of monetary incentives and tasks, (3) within-group competition, (4) within-group cooperation, (5) cultural factors, and (6) non-monetary social incentives. In the spirit of a “meta-study,” we classify the works in our review not only according to the aforementioned research questions, but also disentangling by the type of creative task that the experimental subjects face, the way in which creativity is assessed, and other key features of standard experimental procedures in economic...
Rewards and Creativity: Past, Present and Future
M Abdur Malik, Arif Butt
Research that focuses on the effects of rewards on creativity has resulted in hundreds of empirical studies and several reviews on reward creativity relationship (RCR). Most of the reviews on RCR are retrospective in nature. Although these reviews have quantitatively summarized previous research findings, they have largely overlooked the need of a theoretical framework to guide future researchers. The current review intends to fill this gap. The paper summarizes the theoretical developments in RCR research, and classifies the literature in three distinct phases, i.e. emergence of cognitive perspective; behavioural rebuttal and convergence. The paper identifies three important gaps in the existing literature, i.e. missing moderating effects of individual, group, organizational, and national level factors; ignoring factors that mediate RCR; and considering creativity as a uni-dimensional construct. Based on these gaps, the paper presents a four-factor framework that guides future reward-creativity research. The paper provides practical guidelines for future researchers by identifying several potential moderators and mediators of RCR, and by proposing various ways to classify creativity as a multidimensional construct.
Journal of Business Economics
Self-set salaries and creativity
2020 •
Anja Schwering
Organizations frequently try to incentivize employees to develop highly creative solutions. In this study, we examine self-set salaries as a specific type of incentive design. We investigate whether self-set salaries affect employees’ motivation and overall (creative) performance. Moreover, because self-set salaries potentially risk opportunistic employee behavior, we consider the effect of the observability of peer performance on employees’ level of self-set salaries. Using a laboratory experiment, we hold the average employee compensation constant and demonstrate that, in comparison with fixed-pay contracts, self-set salaries increase the quantitative performance in creative tasks without affecting the average creativity. However, we do not find significant differences between the amount of individuals’ self-set salaries with observability of peer performance and the amount for individuals without the chance to observe peer performance. Our findings are important for firms that re...
The Leadership Quarterly
Rewarding creativity: when does it really matter?
2003 •
Markus Baer
This study examined the possibility that the relation between extrinsic rewards (e.g., pay and recognition) and employee creativity varied as a function of two conditions: employee job complexity and employee cognitive style. Our results showed a positive relation between extrinsic rewards and creativity for employees with an adaptive cognitive style who worked on relatively simple jobs. We found a weak relation between rewards and creativity for employees with an innovative cognitive style who worked on complex jobs and a negative relation for those in the adaptive style/complex job and innovative style/simple job conditions. We discussed theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
Understanding the motivations for creative tasks with group-based incentive systems
Alain Raybaut
Over recent years much attention has been devoted to work motivation in firms and organizations, in relation to the introduction of new incentive systems. The literature emphasizes two aspects of motivation : the intrinsic and extrinsic dimen-sions. This paper explores the issue of motivation for creative tasks. We discuss the potential tensions between incentive systems and the work motivations of groups of inventors through a case study of a French high tech firm. We then propose a model to characterize the impact of the interactions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on the dynamics of knowledge creation. Numerical simulations of the model suggest that crowding out or crowding in effects can occur with different distributions of skills and interaction structures. 1 The research for this paper was supported by the ANR (French National Research Agency) project INAPOR (Incitations et Apprentissage dans les Organisations ; Incentives and Learning inside Organizations). We wan...
The RAND Journal of Economics
Incentives and creativity: evidence from the academic life sciences
2011 •
Pierre Azoulay, Joshua Graff Zivin
Rewards and Creativity: The Next Step
2013 •
Alee Rahman
Though research has shown a consistent and positive relationship between intrinsic rewards and creative behavior, the research to explore the impact of extrinsic rewards on creative behavior has yielded mixed and non-conclusive results.The mechanisms and psychological processes through which rewards affect creative behavior and the boundary conditions within which rewards trigger creative behavior are largely unknown.Most of the reward creative behavior research is based on three assumptions, a-The relationship between rewards and creative behavior is direct and un-moderated, b- Rewards have same impact on individuals, irrespective of their dispositional differences and contextual settings, and c- All types of rewards produce similar type of creative behavior.This study challenges all of these assumptions and forwards the reward - creativity research by identifying factors that mediate and moderate the relationship between rewards and creative behavior.The results based on the data ...
