Project Team Rewards
Literature Review
30
revealed that project team rewards are not covered in detail and often ignored completely
in the project management literature. Almost none of the authors considered
motivation
theories and none considered factors influencing the reward answers. They all provide
their opinion as granted. It was already shown in the previous section that this ‘extreme’
position is not suitable. In addition, most statements are of general nature such as
“Teamwork should be cultivated by rewarding people” (Cappels 2004:24). Detailed
information is missing. That is not surprising, because the authors seldom dedicate more
than one or two paragraphs to project team rewards. Accordingly, there is not much space
for explaining different answers and factors influencing these answers.
3.5.2. Incentive Contracting
Since general project management literature is not satisfying regarding project team
rewards, related disciplines were investigated such as incentive contracting. In project
management, incentive contracting is common and has been used for decades (Herten &
Peeters 1986). In incentive contracting, positive (or negative) incentives are agreed upon
for succeeding (or failing) to deliver a project according to specified objectives (Turner &
Simister 2001). Usually these objectives are time, cost, and/or quality (Branconi & Loch
2004). In construction projects, safety might be an additional objective (Bubshait 2003).
Depending on the incentive, the project’s focus lies on the corresponding objectives which
means that a time incentive usually leads to a faster delivery (Shr & Chen 2003). On the
other hand, quality might suffer from time incentives (Herten & Peeters 1986).
Incentive contracting differs from rewarding employees in one matter significantly.
Rewarding employees is about positive reinforcement and increasing performance. It is
about how to get the best out of the employees. Incentive contracting is all about the
distribution of risks (Ward et al. 1991). It is about consequences if the employees’
performance was not good enough or if other circumstances lead to project failure.
Therefore, incentive contracting tends to focus on penalties instead of positive
reinforcement (Bubshait 2003). Nevertheless, it indicates that in project management,
incentives for project teams could be linked to the common objectives time, cost, and
quality.
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