A. Shirom et al., The effects of pay systems on blue-collar employees' emotional distress: The mediating effects of objective and subjective work monotony, HUMAN RELAT, 52(8), 1999, pp. 1077-1097
We hypothesized that employees' emotional distress would be affected by the
degree to which their payment was contingent upon individual performance.
Respondents were 2747 blue-collar employees in 21 factories in Israel. They
completed questionnaires on company time. We found that, in comparison wit
h those who were paid only according to time worked, being on a performance
-contingent pay system was associated with higher levels of depression and
somatic complaints, but not of anxiety. As expected, these effects were par
tially mediated by the extent to which the respondents' work was monotonous
.