Unintended consequences of performance incentives: impacts of framing and structure on performance and cheating

Setting specific, challenging goals motivates employees to exert greater effort in their jobs. However, goal-setting may have unintended consequences of also motivating unethical behavior. The present study explores these consequences in the context of other features of goal-setting in organizations...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEthics & behavior Vol. 31; no. 7; pp. 498 - 515
Main Authors Nagel, Joshua A., Patel, Kajal R., Rothstein, Ethan G., Watts, Logan L.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Philadelphia Routledge 03.10.2021
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Behavior
Cheating
Ethical conduct
Ethics
Frame analysis
Goal setting
Incentives
Objectives
task performance
Undergraduate students
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Summary:Setting specific, challenging goals motivates employees to exert greater effort in their jobs. However, goal-setting may have unintended consequences of also motivating unethical behavior. The present study explores these consequences in the context of other features of goal-setting in organizations, how goals are framed and rewarded, to determine the tradeoff between performance and ethical behavior. Undergraduate students were incentivized to complete math problems using different outcome frames and incentive structures and were also provided an opportunity to cheat. Findings demonstrate that when goals rewarded with piece-rate incentives are framed as a loss, performance increased, though cheating behavior increased as well.
ISSN:1050-8422
1532-7019
DOI:10.1080/10508422.2020.1813143