TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Koch, Alexander K.
AU  - Morgenstern, Albrecht
        TI  - From Team Spirit to Jealousy: The Pitfalls of Too Much Transparency
        PY  - 2005/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 1661
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp1661
        AB  - Free riding in team production arises because individual effort is not perfectly observable. It seems natural to suppose that greater transparency would enhance incentives. Therefore, it is puzzling that team production often lacks transparency about individual contributions despite negligible costs for providing such information. We offer a rationale for this by demonstrating that transparency can actually hurt incentives. In the presence of career concerns information on the quality of task execution improves incentives while sustaining a cooperative team spirit. In contrast, making the identity of individual contributors observable induces sabotage behavior that looks like jealousy but arises purely from signal jamming by less successful team members. Our results rationalize the conspicuous lack of transparency in team settings with strong career concerns (e.g., co-authorship, architecture, and patent applications) and contribute to explaining the popularity of group incentive schemes in firms.
        KW  - group incentives
KW  - transparency
KW  - reputation
KW  - teams
KW  - sabotage
        ER  -