Pay Secrecy - Publications - Faculty & Research

March 2014
Article

Cheating More for Less: Upward Social Comparisons Motivate the Poorly Compensated to Cheat

By: Leslie K. John, George Loewenstein and Scott Rick

Intuitively, people should cheat more when cheating is more lucrative, but we find that the effect of performance-based pay rates on dishonesty depends on how readily people can compare their pay rate to that of others. In Experiment 1, participants were paid 5 cents... View Details

Keywords: Dishonesty; Social Comparison; Pay Secrecy; Motivation and Incentives; Fairness; Decision Making; Compensation and Benefits

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04 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Governing the Family-Run Business

excluding others from information and decision making. Bribery—hiring relatives who do not deserve jobs, paying relatives more than they deserve, distributing more funds from the company than is responsible for the sake of preserving... View Details

16 Jul 2013
First Look

First Look: July 16

intermediate results or, alternatively, one of closed secrecy around intermediate solutions. We observe the cumulative innovation process in each regime with fine-grained measures and are able to derive inferences with a series of... View Details

Keywords: Anna Secino

08 Sep 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

Capitalism Works Better When I Can See What You're Doing

Transparency, the concept if not the reality, is all the rage in business circles. If you knew why a company charged a certain price for a product, would you be more willing to pay it? If your boss confessed her managerial screw-ups,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

07 Jan 2015
What Do You Think?

SUMMING UP: What Are the Limits On Workplace Transparency?

Excellence: Pay Strategies for the New Economy (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000). Alina Tugend, Secrecy About Salaries May Be on the Wane, The New York Times, August 23, 2014. View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

01 Jun 2010
News

$how Me the Money

Structure How should companies behave in such an environment? Clearly, refusing to pay or receive bribes and acting according to high ethical standards is the best course of action. But operating in the real world is a complicated matter,... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; Administration of Economic Programs; Government; Executive, Legislative, and Other General Government Support; Government; Legal Services; Professional Services; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

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