Cheating in the workplace: an experimental study of the impact of bonuses and productivity
Cheating in the workplace: an experimental study of the impact of bonuses and productivity
We use an online real-effort experiment to investigate how bonus-based pay and worker productivity interact with workplace cheating. Firms often use bonus-based compensation plans, such as group bonuses and firm-wide profit sharing, that induce considerable uncertainty in how much workers are paid. Exposing workers to a compensation scheme based on random bonuses makes them cheat more but has no effect on their productivity. We also find that more productive workers behave more dishonestly. We explain how these results suggest that workers’ cheating behavior responds to the perceived fairness of their employer’s compensation scheme.
120-134
Gill, David
2319117f-b14e-48c6-8a33-34f5c9d4e2ea
Prowse, Victoria
ffdd8965-c965-4f96-a8fa-c8e506af564b
Vlassopoulos, Michael
2d557227-958c-4855-92a8-b74b398f95c7
December 2013
Gill, David
2319117f-b14e-48c6-8a33-34f5c9d4e2ea
Prowse, Victoria
ffdd8965-c965-4f96-a8fa-c8e506af564b
Vlassopoulos, Michael
2d557227-958c-4855-92a8-b74b398f95c7
Gill, David, Prowse, Victoria and Vlassopoulos, Michael
(2013)
Cheating in the workplace: an experimental study of the impact of bonuses and productivity.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 96, .
(doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2013.09.011).
Abstract
We use an online real-effort experiment to investigate how bonus-based pay and worker productivity interact with workplace cheating. Firms often use bonus-based compensation plans, such as group bonuses and firm-wide profit sharing, that induce considerable uncertainty in how much workers are paid. Exposing workers to a compensation scheme based on random bonuses makes them cheat more but has no effect on their productivity. We also find that more productive workers behave more dishonestly. We explain how these results suggest that workers’ cheating behavior responds to the perceived fairness of their employer’s compensation scheme.
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e-pub ahead of print date: 10 October 2013
Published date: December 2013
Organisations:
Economics
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 358306
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/358306
ISSN: 0167-2681
PURE UUID: 09e47dca-b871-4243-b93c-9db9f5c4a8ef
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Date deposited: 09 Oct 2013 13:34
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:28
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Author:
David Gill
Author:
Victoria Prowse
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