ABSTRACT

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.

摘要

设定具体的、具有挑战性的目标会激励员工在工作中付出更大的努力。然而，目标设定也可能会引发不道德的行为，从而产生意想不到的后果。本研究在组织目标设定的其他特征的背景下探索这些后果，目标是如何制定和奖励的，以确定绩效和道德行为之间的权衡。本科生使用不同的结果框架和激励结构来激励他们完成数学问题，并且还提供了作弊的机会。调查结果表明，当以计件奖励为奖励的目标被定义为损失时，绩效会提高，但作弊行为也会增加。