The Cost of High-Powered Incentives: Employee Gaming in Enterprise Software Sales
研究了一家领先企业软件供应商的佣金方案如何导致销售人员为获取奖励而操纵交易时间，造成6%-8%的收入损失，对关注销售激励设计的管理者有价值。
This article investigates the pricing distortions that arise from the use of a common nonlinear incentive scheme at a leading enterprise software vendor. The empirical results demonstrate that salespeople are adept at gaming the timing of deal closure to take advantage of the vendor's accelerating commission scheme. Specifically, salespeople agree to significantly lower pricing in quarters in which they have a financial incentive to close a deal, resulting in mispricing that costs the vendor 6%-8% of revenue. Robustness checks demonstrate that price discrimination by the vendor does not explain the identified effects.