Performance gift-giving and incentive systems: Conditions and effects of peer helping in a sales team

This paper presents a case study of a sales team in which members who had reached their individual performance targets helped their peers achieve theirs by gifting surplus performance. At first glance, this form of peer helping may resemble collusion and appear dysfunctional for the organisation, as it alters the attribution of individual performance and increases bonus payments within the team. However, we show that the practice also generates positive effects for both the functioning of the incentive system and team dynamics. This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it extends research on helping behaviour by identifying and analysing a distinctive form of peer helping—performance gift-giving—which, to our knowledge, has not previously been examined in organisational research. Second, it contributes to the management accounting literature on performance target setting by demonstrating that risk adjustments, typically addressed through formal managerial processes, may also be addressed through informal peer helping, such as performance gift-giving. Third, it contributes to research on teams in management accounting. Whereas prior work in this field has examined how the transparency produced by individual performance information versus team-based performance information influences team cooperation, our study demonstrates how the transferability of individual performance information among team members through peer helping shapes cooperation.