Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The survey studied the effects of newly introduced incentive payment systems. At the time, many organisations in Britain were considering introducing self-financing productivity schemes which involved changes to their wage payment systems. This provided the project team with a unique opportunity for a large-scale comparative study of the effects of introducing new reward schemes to encourage better performance at work supplemented by in-depth studies at a small number of organisations.

Main Topics:

Variables The data covers the following information: a) environmental conditions b) company profile and structure c) incentive scheme design and implementation d) features of the work e) the behavioural system f) operating systems in the organisation g) changes in productivity/performance h) changes in production costs.

In each organisation data was collected from 8 functions, namely senior managers, sales/marketing managers, management services, personnel manager, finance manager, supervisor, shop steward (if any) and 8-20 shop floor workers

Self-completion questionnaires followed by oral interviews. Data were also collected from company reports