Reference no: EM133078663

Two managers share their experiences after having introduced promotion tournaments in their firms in order to incentivize the staff. The first manager, Alice, runs a call center dealing with (non-sale) customer service. Employees are working separatelyfrom each other and performance is measured by Alice's ranking of their friendliness and helpfulness towards clients, monitored via randomly recording calls. Quality stronglyvaries across seasons due to the staff's heavy workload, e.g., after holidays. Since it is a family-run business, Alice relies on the predictability of costs.The second manager, Bob, runs a logistics center. Employees are specialized in their respective tasks of the shipping process. For productive work in the logistics chain, eachmember of staff relies on the prompt and diligent handling of the colleagues preceding his own task. The number of items dispatched by each employee is measured via a trackingsystem. Alice has made very positive experiences with the tournament, observing an increasein productivity for all of her staff. Bob, on the other hand, is faced with an increased number of employees complaining about colleagues and measures little to no increasein productivity. Explain why the implementation of a promotion tournament may be suitable in Alice's firm but not in Bob's.