An economic approach to the study of the determinants of incentive payment in Spanish manufacturing industry (Spanish text)

The main objective of the dissertation is the analysis of the determinants and causes of the use in Spanish manufacturing plants of plans that link the compensation of manual workers to productivity or to the performance achieved by the organisation. For this purpose we have used information relating to 965 manufacturing establishments, each with at least fifty employees. The main theoretical framework used is that provided by personnel economics.; The dissertation is structured in four chapters. In the first chapter we examine the analysis made by personnel economics of the association between compensation and motivation. In the second chapter the empirical evidence on the determinants of variable pay is reviewed. The third chapter contains an analysis of the situation of incentive payment in the Spanish manufacturing industry. The fourth chapter includes the empirical analysis through logit models of the determinants of the adoption of incentive payment plans.; Our results indicate that there is an important difference in the rate of diffusion of the two incentive plans analysed. While in more than half of the plants studied production incentive schemes have been put into practice, only ten per cent of plants have adopted organisational incentive plans.; In the case of production incentives, we have found that they are more widespread in plants where jobs are narrowly defined, workers are less closely monitored and work teams are used. Moreover, we have detected that this kind of incentive scheme is less common in publicly-owned and multinational companies, and in establishments where unions have a strong influence, where there is a low proportion of temporary workers and where there are low levels of competition in market products.; The plants that apply plant or firm incentive schemes sell an important part of their production in foreign markets and belong to multinational groups. They are factories where a growth in the workforce is expected and where market share has increased. In these plants quality assurance systems have been adopted and their level of automation is high. These plans are usually accompanied by a broad definition of jobs and the implementation of employee involvement practices.