How Economic Incentives May Destroy Social,Ecological and Existential Values: The Case of Executive Compensation

Executive compensation has long been a prominent topic in the management literature. A main question that is also given substantial attention in the business ethics literature—even more so in the wake of the recent financial crisis—is whether increasing levels of executive compensation can be justified from an ethical point of view. Also, the relationship of executive compensation to instances of unethical behavior or outcomes has received considerable attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the social, ecological, and existential costs of economic incentives, by discussing how relying on increasing levels of executive compensation may have an adverse effect on managerial performance in a broad sense. Specifically, we argue that one-dimensional economic incentives may destroy existential, social, and systemic values that influence the manager’s commitment to ensure responsible business conduct, and have negative spillover effects that may reduce the manager’s performance. There are well-documented findings that demonstrate that reliance on sources of extrinsic motivation (such as economic incentives) may displace intrinsic motivation. Our perspective is a holistic one, in the sense that we will explore the influence of sources of extrinsic motivation on the manager’s intrinsic commitment to different types of values. We will in particular investigate how it may influence the manager’s ethical reflection and behavior or lack thereof.     

The diffusion of foreign divestment from Burma

We examine variation in the rate of divestment by multinational firms from Burma. We argue that in addition to a set of firm‐level characteristics known to impact divestment decisions, firms are also influenced by characteristics of their home country and the divestment patterns of others. Using data on firms operating in Burma during 1996–2002, we model these multiple influences on firms to divest. Our results show that beyond firm‐level concerns, firms divest in response to the political characteristics of their home country, including protest, the level of political freedom, and transparency of institutions. We also find that the centrality of their home country in the network of intergovernmental organizations impacts divestment patterns in interesting ways. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transatlantic business ethics

The Business Ethics Center of the Budapest University of Economic Sciences organized a Transatlantic Business Ethics Summit on September 15–17, 2000 in Budapest, Hungary. The Summit was sponsored by the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS) and Procter & Gamble.
The main function of the Summit was to provide a forum for leading American and European scholars to explore the background theories and value bases of business ethics from the perspective of the 21st century. The participants reflected on the state of the art of business ethics as it has been practised in the USA and Europe; however, the future of business ethics as a discipline was the main focus of the Summit. Since business ethics is closely related to business and capitalism, some considerations of the 21st century economic, political, and social reality were presented too. The paper is based on and composed from the abstracts provided by the participants of the Transatlantic Business Ethics Summit. The abstract booklet can be obtained from Laszlo Zsolnai, the Convenor of the Summit.     

Managers and their not-so rational decisions

Today's corporate environment requires managers to be excellent decision makers. Their ability to make fast, widely-supported, and effective decisions will, in large part, shape the performance of their firms. In this article, we describe two cognitive systems that influence decision making. System 1 refers to a process that is fast, effortless, and intuitive. System 2 is a slow, controlled, and rule-governed decision-making process. Both are important to a wide variety of managerial decisions, and they interact with each other. There are, however, a number of forces at work that hinder the effectiveness of these processes. For example, we know from prospect theory that managers are unwilling to incur loss, so much so that they often make irrational decisions based on a small probability that they could avoid such loss. Another example, the escalation of commitment, explains why managers may continue to dedicate resources to failed projects. We describe these and other biases, with a view toward helping managers better understand the problems of decision making and improve the effectiveness of their decisions.     

Income Tax Evasion in a Unionised Labour Market

Labour market outcomes can depend on tax evasion since the returns from working are affected by the amount of taxes paid. In this paper, unionised workers are assumed to select the income which they declare. The rational trade union takes this decision into account. It is shown that the employment effects of a linear income tax are not altered qualitatively by tax evasion if the fine for evasion is a function only of the evaded tax. Moreover, the consequences of changes in the tax enforcement system are determined by the ability to choose evasion activities optimally. The existence of unrestricted tax evasion opportunities lowers wages.     

Money Information in Lonergan–von Neumann Systems

Important technological changes have posed serious difficulties in the practical use of von Neumann's model of economic growth, which explicitly ‘eliminated all monetary complications’. The present paper draws on Lonergan's development of some Schumpeterian ideas to extend the von Neumann model to incorporate technological change with money. It gives an analysis of the notion of credit money as ‘information on the move”. General comparisons with the data of economic history indicate that the model shows a new realism in representing important dynamic aspects of cyclic economic growth.     

Privatization and efficiency wages

The impact of privatization is investigated in a shirking model of efficiency wages. Without trade unions, privatization — modeled as a stricter control of employees — lowers wages and raises employment, output, and profits, while effort and productivity effects depend on the employees' risk aversion. However, for a utilitarian monopoly union, facing a company characterized by a constant-elasticity labor-demand schedule, privatization raises efficiency wages. If privatization is modeled as a stronger profit orientation, wages, effort, and labor productivity will rise, while employment will shrink in a wage-setting firm. Again, wage and employment effects can be reversed in the case of wage negotiations.     

Experimental evidence on personality traits and preferences

Using an experiment, we test the relation between personality traits and revealed risk and ambiguity preferences, and we consider the effects of personality traits prevalence in a group on the decision making of each group member. In the experiment, subjects reveal their risk and ambiguity preferences through lottery choices. They then participate in an unstructured group chat. Afterwards, they are given the chance to revise their initial lottery choices. Results show that personality traits affect ambiguity but not risk preferences before the chat. Specifically, agreeableness is negatively related to ambiguity aversion. We also show that the probability of changing decisions after the chat is affected by the individual's personality traits but not by the traits of the other group members. The latter only affects the direction and the degree of the change.