Domains of reciprocity beyond monetary compensation: How do non-pecuniary factors affect effort and shirking?

Abstract

This empirical study examines how sources of reciprocity are related to work motivation by distinguishing positive and negative work attitudes in practical working environments. We move away from the unidimensional perspective of monetary compensation and investigate employees’ reciprocal behaviors, together with non-pecuniary aspects of work relations such as human relationships and company management. The results show that positive reciprocity, represented by effort, is fundamentally distinct from negative reciprocity, represented by shirking, when examining the multi-dimensional sources of reciprocity. Additionally, our analyses reveal that non-pecuniary factors in the working environment have a relatively large degree of association with work motivation, even when compared to monetary compensation. Our results complement those from controlled laboratory experiments.

Keywords:

• equity
• inequity aversion
• reciprocity
• work motivation

JEL Classifications:

• J0
• J16
• J5

Public Interest Statement

This study examines how factors beyond monetary compensation are related to work motivation using a survey conducted in several Asian countries. Specifically, our empirical analysis distinguishes work attitudes of two types, namely effort and shirking, because the factors that motivate each type could be different. Our analysis shows that human relationships have the strongest relationship with extra effort, but company management is the most important factor related to shirking. Additionally, equity is not related to extra effort, but inequity is related to increased shirking. Our analyses reveal that non-pecuniary factors, such as human relationships and company management, in the working environment have a relatively large degree of association with work motivation, even when compared to monetary compensation.

Acknowledgments

We thank Haruka Tanaka and Masao Yamakoshi for their excellent work as research assistants and acknowledge the financial support from the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Nos. 22530238 and 25380320) and Aoyama Gakuin University. The funding source had no involvement in the study design, analysis, or the interpretation of the data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit the article for publication. The first author thanks the second author, who kindly provided the data for the analysis. The first author is responsible for any errors related to the analysis and the writing of the paper. The second author thanks Keisuke Kokubun for his support in the data collection.

Notes

1. Please refer to books such as Fabrigar and Wegener (2011) for more information on factor analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [grant number 22530238], [grant number 25380320].

Notes on contributors

Akinori Tomohara

Akinori Tomohara received his PhD in Economics from Johns Hopkins University. Upon finishing his PhD, Tomohara served as a faculty member at the City University of New York (Graduate Center and Queens College) and the University of Pittsburgh. He has also worked as an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson Forecast. His research interests include the human resource management of multinational companies.

Akihiko Ohno

Akihiko Ohno, PhD, is a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. His research interest is economic development in Asia, where he has conducted various researches in villages and factories. Ohno has continued with his research while traveling around areas left behind in economic development. His major subjects include organizational behaviors of factory workers in Asia.

We utilize our expertise to analyze how human resource management strategies of multinational companies help to develop the labor force in less developed countries through improved work motivation.