IHK-Chair of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
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In this article we examine the influence of two goal compensation schemes on lying behavior. Based on the die rolling task of Fischbacher/Föllmi-Heusi (2013), we apply an individual goal incentive scheme and a team goal incentive scheme. In both settings individuals receive a fixed bonus when attaining the goal. We find that under team goal incentives subjects are less inclined to over-report production outputs beyond the amount which is on average necessary for goal attainment. Investigating subjects’ beliefs on their team mates’ behavior under team goal incentives reveals that subjects who either believe that lying is not profitable (i.e., the team goal cannot be reached with a lie) or not absolutely necessary (i.e., there is a good chance that the team goal can also be reached without lying) tend to be honest. We also find that subjects who believe that the team goal has already been reached by their team mates tend to over-report production outputs. Across treatments, women are found to be more honest than men. Subjects’ ersonality is not associated with reported production outputs. Our work contributes to previous research on how different compensation schemes affect unethical behavior in organizational settings.
We analyze the effects of limited feedback on beliefs and contributions in a repeated public goods game setting. In a first experiment, we test whether exogenously determined feedback about a good example (i.e., the maximum contribution in a period) in contrast to a bad example (i.e., the minimum contribution in a period) induces higher contributions. We find that when the type of feedback is not transparent to the group members, good examples boost cooperation while bad examples hamper it. There is no difference when the type of feedback is transparent. In a second experiment, feedback is endogenously chosen by a group leader. The results show that a large majority of the group leaders count on the positive effect of providing a good example. This is true regardless whether they choose the feedback type to be transparent or non-transparent. Half of the group leaders make the type of feedback transparent. With endogenously chosen feedback about good examples no difference in contributions can be observed among transparent and non-transparent feedback selection. In both experiments feedback shapes subjects’ beliefs. With exogenously chosen feedback, transparent feedback tends to reduce beliefs when good examples are provided as feedback and tends to increase beliefs in when bad examples are provided as feedback compared to the respective non-transparent cases. Our results shed new light on the design of feedback rovision in public goods settings.