Utteeyo Dasgupta (Fordham University) – “Let It Be”: Motivating Workers Through Task Autonomy

This paper investigates the importance of having autonomy on non-remuneration dimensions in the workplace. We introduce a novel game WAG that incorporates key features of employer-employee dynamics. Employees earn by completing a real effort task and are asked to contribute a percentage of their earnings to a modified social dilemma game that adds to employer income. We implement five treatments that vary in the degree of autonomy that employees have in choosing their real effort tasks. Our results indicate that allowing workers greater autonomy leads to significant improvements in productivity and satisfaction. We also find that providing employee task autonomy can lead to higher (lower) pro-social behavior, especially when employers make a demonstrably explicit choice to offer (withhold) task autonomy among workers.