The Effects of Contingent and Noncontingent Rewards on Employee Satisfaction and Performance

Summary The proposal that there is no inherent relationship between satisfaction and task performance and that the relationship depends upon the contingency of the reward system on performance was tested among 63 black factory workers in South Africa. Three groups of subjects were given respectively (a) a payment for every instance of good performance (faultless checking), (b) a 25 percent chance of receiving a payment for every instance of good performance, and (c) a payment for every performance whether good or bad. Task performance and self-reports of satisfaction were measured at the end of the incentive week. The correlation between satisfaction and performance was significantly higher in the first group, in which reward was highly contingent upon good performance. Improvement in performance was also significantly higher in this group than in the other groups. These results are taken as supporting the proposal.