Section Five
more risks and responsibility for results. As a
consequence we are slowly coming to the
realization that we may be paying for the wrong
things, sending inconsistent messages about the
company to its employees, or creating artificial
expectations of continued advancement and
raises, no matter how well the company
performs.^2Some researchers have asserted that there has only been
one good study per year on the topic over the past 40 years.^3
Another barrier also has limited our understanding of
compensation, as well as other areas of management. That
barrier has been the difficulty of synthesizing the results of
multiple studies in order to arrive at firm conclusions about
their collective findings. Fortunately, meta-analysis techniques
have been developed that allow researchers to draw rigorous
conclusions from comprehensive empirical reviews of the
literature. A recent meta-analysis was able to reach very
definitive findings about the performance effects of financial
incentives. In addition, it refuted assertions by some scholars
that financial incentives act to kill intrinsic motivation:^4
Our meta-analysis explored whether the
relationship between financial incentives and
performance was stronger for extrinsic (i.e., dull