Lehmann Johannes, Beckmann Michael
University of Basel, Faculty of Business and Economics, Basel, Switzerland.
Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany.
Swiss J Econ Stat. 2025;161(1):1. doi: 10.1186/s41937-024-00132-3. Epub 2025 Jan 30.
Using novel survey data from Swiss firms, this paper empirically examines the relationship between the use of digital technologies and the prevalence of performance incentives. We argue that digital technologies tend to reduce the cost of organizational monitoring through improved measurement of employee behavior and performance, as well as through employee substitution in conjunction with a reduced agency problem. While we expect the former mechanism to increase the prevalence of performance incentives, the latter is likely to decrease it. Our doubly robust ATE estimates show that companies using business software and certain key technologies of Industry 4.0 increasingly resort to performance incentives, suggesting that the improved measurement effect dominates the employee substitution effect. In addition, we find that companies emerging as technology-friendly use performance incentives more frequently than their technology-averse counterparts. Both findings hold for managerial and non-managerial employees. Our estimation results are robust to a variety of sensitivity checks and suggest that Swiss businesses leverage digital technologies to enhance control over production or service processes, allowing them to intensify their management of employees through performance incentives.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41937-024-00132-3.
本文利用来自瑞士公司的新调查数据，实证研究了数字技术的使用与绩效激励措施普及程度之间的关系。我们认为，数字技术往往会通过改进对员工行为和绩效的衡量，以及通过员工替代并减少代理问题来降低组织监控成本。虽然我们预计前一种机制会提高绩效激励措施的普及程度，但后一种机制可能会降低它。我们的双重稳健平均治疗效果估计表明，使用商业软件和某些关键工业4.0技术的公司越来越多地采用绩效激励措施，这表明改进衡量效果超过了员工替代效果。此外，我们发现，对技术友好的公司比厌恶技术的公司更频繁地使用绩效激励措施。这两个发现对管理人员和非管理人员都适用。我们的估计结果在各种敏感性检验中都很稳健，表明瑞士企业利用数字技术加强对生产或服务流程的控制，从而能够通过绩效激励措施强化对员工的管理。
在线版本包含可在10.1186/s41937-024-00132-3获取的补充材料。
