The Tyranny of Metrics

by Jerry Z. Muller

Some rewards enhance intrinsic motivation. For example, when the rewards are verbal and expressed primarily to convey information (“You did a great job on that!”) rather than to exercise control.9 Or when awards are given out after the fact, for excellence in achievement, without having been offered as an incentive in advance.10 Or, in fields such as science or scholarship, when prizes or honorific titles are bestowed to recognize long-term achievement.11 More broadly, above-market wages can reinforce employees’ intrinsic motivation if those wages are perceived as a signal of the organization’s appreciation of the employees’ performance.12 Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can work in tandem when the outcomes that are rewarded are in keeping with the agents’ own sense of mission: when hospitals, for example, are rewarded for better safety records.