Harnessing the power of social incentives to curb shirking in teams

We study several solutions to shirking in teams, each of which triggers social incentives by reshaping the workplace social context. Using an experimental design, we manipulate social pressure at work by varying the type of workplace monitoring and the extent to which employees are allowed to engage in social interaction. This design allows us to assess the effectiveness as well as the appeal of each solution. Despite similar effectiveness in boosting productivity, only organizational systems involving social interaction (via chat) were comparably appealing to a baseline treatment. This suggests that solutions involving social interaction are more likely to be effective in the long-run than solutions involving monitoring alone.