Wonderful and Woeful Work: Incentives, Selection, Turnover, and Workers’ Motivation

The starting point of this thesis has been the premise that people not solely work for money, and that working is not an altogether dreadful experience. Although many people will agreewith thisstatement, economic models of human behaviour at the workplace often assume exactly the opposite. Applying the techniques used in standard economic analysis, this thesis has examined the implications of heterogeneity in the intrinsic motivation of workers for optimal monetary incentive schemes and for the recruitment and selection of employees. Furthermore, the thesis has looked into the relation between workers’ satisfaction with various aspects of their job and their decision whether or not to search for another job, and if so, where to look for or take up a new position. Here, we summarise the main findings and give some suggestions for further research.

• View at Worldcat

Free Full Text ( Final Version , 1mb )