Work

Motivating Public Sector Employees: Public Good Contributions in Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: We present a lab-in-the-field experiment with employees of the Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority to understand how to improve coordination and collaboration in their daily work. Participants play a series of public good games under different rules: a standard game, a game with a threshold, and a game with a randomly selected anonymous monitor who has the power to punish. We show that a common goal, in the form of a threshold to be attained for the group’s success, is significantly more effective than a potentially punishing monitor for increasing individual effort and, ultimately, group outcomes (conditional on the threshold being attained). This result advocates for the introduction of team goals as coordination and motivation devices in settings where tasks are performed by groups and are subject to free riding and coordination challenges.

Source: Economic Development and Cultural Change

DOI: 10.1086/731967

Authors: George Joseph, Josepa Miquel-Florensa, Sanjay Pahuja, Yi Rong Hoo, Tewodros Tebekew

Institutions: World Bank, Toulouse School of Economics

Language: English

Topic: Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Agence Nationale de la Recherche

Award: Toulouse Graduate School défis en économie et sciences sociales quantitatives