Sebastian Fest , Ola Kvaløy , Petra Nieken , Anja Schöttner
{"title":"How (not) to motivate online workers: Two controlled field experiments on leadership in the gig economy","authors":"Sebastian Fest , Ola Kvaløy , Petra Nieken , Anja Schöttner","doi":"10.1016/j.leaqua.2021.101514","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>An increasing number of workers participate in online labor markets. In contrast to traditional employment relationships within firms, the interaction between online workers and their employers are short and impersonal, which makes motivating online workers more challenging. We present results from two large-scale controlled field experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk investigating the effects of monetary rewards and soft leadership techniques on output quantity and quality. In the first study, we investigate the effects of monetary rewards and simple upfront messages (praise or reference points). Monetary rewards increase quantity significantly. Sending simple messages, however, can have a significantly negative effect on quantity. The second study concentrates on the effects of communication based on charismatic leadership techniques. Charismatic communication techniques can also backfire if only a subset of them is used, whereas using a broad set including quantitative goals increases output quantity significantly. Neither intervention had a significant effect on the quality of work.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48434,"journal":{"name":"Leadership Quarterly","volume":"32 6","pages":"Article 101514"},"PeriodicalIF":9.1000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.leaqua.2021.101514","citationCount":"17","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Leadership Quarterly","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984321000199","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 17
Abstract
An increasing number of workers participate in online labor markets. In contrast to traditional employment relationships within firms, the interaction between online workers and their employers are short and impersonal, which makes motivating online workers more challenging. We present results from two large-scale controlled field experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk investigating the effects of monetary rewards and soft leadership techniques on output quantity and quality. In the first study, we investigate the effects of monetary rewards and simple upfront messages (praise or reference points). Monetary rewards increase quantity significantly. Sending simple messages, however, can have a significantly negative effect on quantity. The second study concentrates on the effects of communication based on charismatic leadership techniques. Charismatic communication techniques can also backfire if only a subset of them is used, whereas using a broad set including quantitative goals increases output quantity significantly. Neither intervention had a significant effect on the quality of work.
期刊介绍:
The Leadership Quarterly is a social-science journal dedicated to advancing our understanding of leadership as a phenomenon, how to study it, as well as its practical implications.
Leadership Quarterly seeks contributions from various disciplinary perspectives, including psychology broadly defined (i.e., industrial-organizational, social, evolutionary, biological, differential), management (i.e., organizational behavior, strategy, organizational theory), political science, sociology, economics (i.e., personnel, behavioral, labor), anthropology, history, and methodology.Equally desirable are contributions from multidisciplinary perspectives.