Structuring incentives to elicit work effort during the process of industrialization: evidence from Vietnamese businesses

Abstract

Industrial advancements in developing economies have brought with them the primacy of discretionary tasks over simple tasks in production. Differing characteristics of these separate types of tasks may require distinct incentive mechanisms to elicit work effort from employees. Using the data collected from 954 blue-collar production workers, this study examines changes in incentive mechanisms with industrial advances by testing the relative validity of major motivation models between low- and high-skill industries in Vietnam. Our results indicate that the gift exchange model gains ascendancy over the mainstream economic model as developing economies upgrade their industrial structures.

Keywords:

• discretionary task
• efficiency wage
• industrial advancement
• motivation
• Vietnam