Motivating Public Sector Employees

Public Good Contributions in Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority

Bibliographic Data

ID5138969
AuthorsGeorge Joseph (0000-0002-8569-8297, World Bank), Josepa Miquel-Florensa, Josepa Miquel‐Florensa (0000-0002-7100-7088, World Bank), Sanjay Pahuja (World Bank), Yi Rong Hoo (0000-0003-3333-0949, World Bank), Tewodros Tebekew (World Bank)
Year2025
Volume73
Issue3
Pages1475-1499
Publication date2025-04-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomic Development and Cultural Change (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0079 • E-ISSN: 1539-2988
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/731967
OpenAlexW4400002356
LanguageEN
References cited24

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

Business · Political science · Public authority · Public sector · Sewerage · Water sector · Water supply · Auction Theory and Applications · Engineering · Environmental Engineering · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Law · Public Administration

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