Nurdiana Gaus, Jasruddin, Arifin Saleh, Risna Resnawaty, Muhammad Azwar Paramma, Yurisna Tanjung
This paper aims to examine how an inappropriate traded-off design scheme of monetary rewards as reinforcers to task motivation and performance can promote poor quality of publication in academia and create the potential ‘hidden costs of rewards.’ Six universities in the western and eastern regions of Indonesia were selected to investigate this issue, and 70 academics from different social science backgrounds were interviewed. Our research results show that the monetary rewards implemented by the Indonesian government only act as a trigger for the initial motivation and become a quantitative lever for journal publications, not a quality lever. Consequently, the quality of publication is still poor because of the low-powered incentive schemes that are designed based on task-completion, disregarding the ‘synergistic effect’ between the government's intentions and the academics' attributions. The implications of this study and recommendations to policymakers are provided in this paper. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Department of Social Welfare, STIKS Tamalanrea Makassar, Makassar, Indonesia; Department of Physics, State University of Makassar, Makassar, Indonesia; Department of Social Welfare, University of Muhammadiyah Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia; Department of Social Welfare, Padjajaran University, Bandung, Indonesia
