On September 20, 2018 GSOM SPbU hosted guest research seminar led by Niсk Zubanov, PhD. (University of Konstanz, Germany). The topic of the seminar was interested to many students, authors and researchers: "Market competition and the effectiveness of incentive payments".

 

 

At the seminar, Professor Zubanov presented his study on rational use of pay-for-performance (PfP) to stimulate competitiveness and increase the efficiency of company employees.

 

It is known that the effectiveness of incentive payments depends on factors related to employees and company specifics. Much less is known about the role of these factors outside companies. In this case, the role of market competition in the effectiveness of incentive payments was investigated.

 

According to the theory of Niсk Zubanov and his colleagues, there are two opposing effects: business theft and the reaction of the competitor, which together create an inverted U-shaped relationship between the effectiveness of PfP and competition. Weak competition creates weak incentives to increase the efforts of the employee, because the market lacks additional capital, while strong competition creates weak incentives, as competitors react more. Thus, PfP has a strong influence on moderate competition. The report presented the results of testing this assumption through experiment in the retail network. These data confirmed the theory advanced and refuted the alternative explanations.

 

After the presentation of the study, a fruitful discussion took place between the speaker and the audience. The seminar was attended by lecturers, doctoral students and students of GSOM SPbU Master' and Bachelor’ programs.

 

	Nick Zubanov — Doctor of Economics, Professor (W3) of organizational economics at University of Konstantz, Germany. He taught management strategy at Goethe University (Frankfurt), economics at Erasmus University (Rotterdam) and HR management at Tilburg University. He also was employed of PBC Bureau, Netherlands on economic policy analysis. Research interests of Professor Zubanov: effectiveness in management; middle managers, personnel turnover and sales; competition in the product market and performance; ignoring risk, multiplicative noise and effort with linear stimuli; a variety of skills and work efficiency.