Incidence, Coverage and Employee Knowledge of Participation in Financial Incentive Schemes: Evidence from US Cases

Type of Work

Article

Date

2012

Journal Title

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

Journal ISSN

0958-5192

Journal Volume

23

Journal Issue

8

First Page

1547

Last Page

1569

DOI

10.1080/09585192.2012.661989

Abstract

By using new linked firm and individual data for cases in one US region, including firms in banking, we contribute to three issues concerning the incidence of financial incentive (FI) schemes: (1) firm-level data reveal the existence of substantial differences in incidence across firms in similar industries in this region and provide weak evidence of a role for urban versus regional location in accounting for differences in implementation of FIs; (2) individual-level data, gathered from face-to-face surveys for almost 900 employees in the cases, show substantial within-firm heterogeneity concerning the distribution of particular FIs among employees, although probit estimates do not uncover consistent evidence concerning the key determinants of the reasons behind these mainly managerial choices for all FIs; (3) the individual data also indicate the existence of substantial within-establishment heterogeneity in employee knowledge of the coverage of FIs. In accounting for the determinants of this variation in knowledge, for some plans, sometimes probit estimates provide evidence in support of hypotheses concerning age, experience and education. We also find roles for some attitudinal factors relating to discretionary effort, peer monitoring and employee involvement, and thus augment findings reported in earlier work that typically have used more restricted data. One general implication of our study is that research of issues surrounding FIs may be best served when data collection operates in tandem at different levels of aggregation.

Hamilton Areas of Study

Economics

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