Abstract (EN)

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the relation between implicit/explicit incentives and cooperation in teams. Using information from a very detailed French matched employer/employee survey on computerisation and organisational change (COI), we identify some crucial practices of teamwork and assess their impact on cooperation among colleagues, hourly salary and the employees’ perceptions about their working environment. According to the theoretical literature, cooperation in teams can arise from the use of external incentives, i.e. imposed by formal contracts or external arrangements (external monitoring, performance evaluation, use of team-based rewards, task assignment) but also from work practices that generate implicit incentives to exert effort. Following the theoretical economic literature we identify the following work practices that can act as mechanisms to foster cooperation in teams : repeated interactions with co-workers, peer monitoring, interdependencies in production, job autonomy (to decide the workload and divide the tasks among colleagues) and task variety assignment. The research questions we address are : how do the different work practices we identify relate to mutual help at work ? What is the interplay between explicit and implicit incentives on mutual help ? Do explicit incentives tend to crowd out or to enhance implicit incentives ? How are hourly salary and the perception of having a good working environment affected by the different work practices ? In general we find a positive impact of these work practices on cooperation, but we find important differences in the way they affect employees’ salary and perceptions about their working environment.