Ambiguous Sticks and Carrots: The Effect of Contract Framing and Payoff Ambiguity on Employee Effort
研究发现，在报酬模糊（员工不清楚付出努力能得到多少回报）的情况下，惩罚合同会因员工乐观预期惩罚小而降低努力，而奖金合同则因乐观预期奖金大而提高努力，且对更乐观的员工影响更强。
ABSTRACT Research suggests that employees work harder under penalty contracts than under economically equivalent bonus contracts. We build on this literature by examining how the motivational advantage of penalty contracts depends on a common aspect of real-world contracts: payoff ambiguity. With payoff ambiguity, employees provide effort without knowing how much pay they will receive for a given level of performance. According to our theory, this ambiguity opens the door for employee optimism, which has contrasting effects under each contract frame. Results from an experiment support this theory, with an increase in ambiguity leading to less employee effort with penalty contracts (as employees optimistically expect small penalties) and more effort with bonus contracts (as employees optimistically expect large bonuses). We also find that these effects are stronger for more dispositionally optimistic employees. Overall, our results suggest that bonus contracts may be more motivating and penalty contracts less motivating than previously thought.