The impact of technological changes on incentives and motivations to work hard

The diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) associated with the diffusion of new work practices since fifteen years has raised concerns about the impact of these changes on productivity. Some recent studies underline a positive impact of ICT and of new work practices on firms' productivity. But as well known in the principal-agent literature agents are predisposed to shirking, so, in order to obtain productivity gains firms need to provide workers with sufficient incentives and to encourage motivations. Our main results, obtained with data collected in Luxembourg in 2004-2005, indicate that ICT permit to create a team spirit and an enriching work environment that influences positively pure intrinsic motivations of workers. These motivations, associated with positive incentives, can be substitutes for the direct monitoring introduced usually to obtain the effort of employees, but hard to be used in a context of increasing autonomy.