In this paper, we have shown that the relationships between motivation, incentives and
performance have gained much interest since the 80s, as may be judged by the wealth of the
avalaible empirical and theoretical literature in the field of social sciences. The survey of the
literature has revealed common themes and preliminary results. A first result is that PRP
systems do increase performance but generally reduce public sector employees‘ motivation.
The efficiency of the PRP systems seems to depend strongly on the type of mission or activity
(for instance, it appears to be less efficient in healthcare than in education). It is also
conditioned by the hierarchical position of the employees: higher-level employees seem to be
more intrinsically motivated than lower-level employees. When faced with the PRP system,
civil servants continue to behave in an altruistic manner but some of them switch to
opportunistic behavior (information manipulation, misreporting)