Punishment Motives for Small and Big Lies

Corporate fraud typically involves deceptive financial statements that are harmful for some stakeholders. We analyze how preferences for honesty and economic fairness shape the punishment of such untruthful statements. Our laboratory experiment disentangles the crucial confound that, for deceptive financial statements, larger deviations from the truth imply both a stronger violation of the honesty norm and an increase in economic harm. Our study measures how people punish increased dishonesty controlling for the corresponding economic harm. We find that punishment increases with the size of the lie. This behavioral pattern is driven by people who are honest themselves. Our results suggest that popular demand for punitive measures in case of financial scandals reflects a genuine interest in the enforcement of social norms.     

Solow's Harrod: Transforming macroeconomic dynamics into a model of long-run growth

Modern growth theory derives mostly from Solow's “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth” (1956). Solow's own interpretation locates its origins in his view that Harrod's growth model implied a tendency toward progressive collapse of the economy. He formulates his view in terms of Harrod's invoking a fixed-coefficients production function. We challenge Solow's reading of Harrod's “Essay in Dynamic Theory,” arguing that Harrod's object in providing a “dynamic” theory had little to do with the problem of long-run growth as Solow understood it, but instead addressed medium-run fluctuations, the “inherent instability” of economies. Solow's interpretation of Harrod was grounded in a particular culture of understanding embedded in the practice of formal modelling that emerged in economics in the post-Second World War period. Solow's interpretation, which ultimately dominated the profession's view of Harrod, is a case study in the difficulties in communicating across distinct interpretive communities and of the potential for losing content and insights in the process. Harrod's objects – particularly, of trying to account for a tendency of the economy toward chronic recessions – were lost to the mainstream literature.     

Club of Pioneers — nachhaltiger Dialog per Community Marketing

Zusammenfassung  New Green, ?ko-Chic, Greentainment: Die ?kologiedebatte produziert unaufh?rlich Trends. Mit dem Wissen um die Endlichkeit fossiler Ressourcen ist die Automobilindustrie st?rker denn je gefordert, ?kologisch bewusst zu agieren. Umweltbewusstes Handeln ist dabei nicht nur eine Frage der Haltung, sondern auch der Zukunftssicherung. Es müssen Produkte für eine nachhaltige Mobilit?t entwickelt und der Dialog mit relevanten Anspruchsgruppen und Kunden geführt werden. Communities bieten für einen solchen Dialog eine Plattform, wie das Beispiel der BMW Group zeigt.     

Accuracy and effectiveness in appraisal outcomes: the influence of self‐efficacy,personal factors and organisational variables

Two studies tested relationships of personal factors and organisational context variables with rating accuracy and perceived effectiveness of appraisals, and the role of self‐efficacy as a mediator of the relationships between the two sets of variables. Study 1 was a controlled experiment in which nurse supervisors appraised a video stimulus of a nurse's performance. Study 2 was a field study in which nurses and their supervisors each independently completed an assessment of their annual appraisal review, following the meeting. A ten‐item scale for performance appraiser self‐efficacy (PASE) was developed and tested for measurement properties on a large sample of nurses that included those who participated in either Study 1 or Study 2. The PASE scale was found to have high reliability and reasonable predictive validity. PASE predicted rating accuracy, appraiser and appraisee perceptions of effectiveness, and appraiser‐appraisee agreement on the effectiveness of an actual appraisal, after controlling for the effects of personal factors and organisational context. The main contextual influences were accountability, importance and management concern but the effects varied for self‐efficacy and different appraisal outcomes. The main predictor of self‐efficacy was the amount of training received by appraisers across the multiple sub‐tasks of appraisal.     

Can advertising elements improve consumer evaluations of brand extensions with a moderate or low fit?

The focus of this paper is on analyzing how consumer evaluations of brand extensions with a moderate or poor fit to the core brand can be enhanced using advertising cues such as a fit prime and advertisement elements that are typically associated with the core brand. The results of the empirical study show that using a fit prime in advertisements is beneficial for moderately fitting brand extensions, but disadvantageous for poorly fitting extensions. Moreover, the results show that advertisement elements that are typically associated with the core brand can build links between the extension and the core brand and thus enhance the perceived fit. These findings imply that the options for extending a brand should not be considered as limited to product categories similar to the category of the core product because perceived fit can be influenced by communication. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

“Why Don’t Consumers Care About CSR?”: A Qualitative Study Exploring the Role of CSR in Consumption Decisions

There is an unresolved paradox concerning the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in consumer behavior. On the one hand, consumers demand more and more CSR information from corporations. On the other hand, research indicates a considerable gap between consumers’ apparent interest in CSR and the limited role of CSR in purchase behavior. This article attempts to shed light on this paradox by drawing on qualitative data from in-depth interviews. The findings show that the evaluation of CSR initiatives is a complex and hierarchically structured process, during which consumers distinguish between core, central, and peripheral factors. This article describes these factors in detail and explains the complexity of consumers’ assessment of CSR. These insights then serve as a basis for discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of the research findings. To this end, the article contributes to a better understanding of the role of CSR in consumption decisions.     

A fault confessed is half redressed—Confessions and punishment

Confessions after failures are socially desirable. However, confessions also bear the risk of punishment. In a laboratory experiment I examine how confessions work. I analyze whether the willingness to punish harmful failures depends on how the harmed party has learned about the outcome. The harmed party can learn about the outcome via random detection or self-report by the performer. There are two major findings: first, confessions are a powerful instrument: punishment for confessed failures is less likely than for randomly detected failures. Second, confessions are much more likely to occur if there is no punishment.     

Bringing the elephant into the room? Enacting conflict in collective prosocial organizing

Cross-sector partnerships have the capacity to bring together partners from very different backgrounds and circumstances toward collective prosocial efforts. We conducted a longitudinal inductive field study of eight cross-sector partnerships formed as new ventures addressing a variety of fundamental social challenges in the context of deep inequality in post-Apartheid South Africa. This allowed us to develop theory and a process model that explains how some partnerships are able to achieve collective prosocial efforts while others engage in only one-sided efforts or become inactive. The key differences hinge on processes of enacting or failing to enact conflicting material interests among relevant stakeholders. Our results have implications for the inclusion of material interests in theories of cross-sector partnering and for our understanding of entrepreneurship under conditions of inequality. The theory we develop provides a platform for future research on collective prosocial organizing in the contexts that need it most.     

Fairness versus efficiency: how procedural fairness concerns affect coordination

We investigate in a laboratory experiment whether procedural fairness concerns affect how well individuals are able to solve a coordination problem in a two-player Volunteer’s Dilemma. Subjects receive external action recommendations, either to volunteer or to abstain from it, in order to facilitate coordination and improve efficiency. We manipulate the fairness of the recommendation procedure by varying the probabilities of receiving the disadvantageous recommendation to volunteer between players. We find evidence that while recommendations improve overall efficiency regardless of their implications for expected payoffs, there are behavioural asymmetries depending on the recommendation: advantageous recommendations are followed less frequently than disadvantageous ones and beliefs about others’ actions are more pessimistic in the treatment with recommendations inducing unequal expected payoffs.