Authority, Incentives, and Performance: Evidence from a Chinese Newspaper
利用一家中国报纸的人事数据，研究权威分配如何影响员工激励和绩效，发现将编辑决策权从中层转给高层能提升记者绩效、减少其私利行为，但削弱了中层编辑的主动性。
This paper examines how the allocation of authority within an organization affects workers’ incentives and performance, using personnel data from a Chinese newspaper. Relying on an authority change that transferred the right of making editorial decisions from midlevel editors to top editors in four of the eight divisions in the newspaper, I find that the authority change improves reporters’ performance while reducing their activities for private gain and decreases midlevel editors’ journalistic initiative. To reconcile these findings, a synthesis of two theories on authority and incentives—the vertical and the horizontal allocation of authority—is needed.