Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion
In this paper, we investigate how increasing transparency about managers’ treatment of their employees affects the tendency of employees to initiate collusion. Building on behavioral economics theory, we argue that employees who are treated less kindly by their managers are more willing to initiate...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/152149 |
| _version_ | 1811683744432521216 |
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| author | Maas, Victor S. Yin, Huaxiang |
| author2 | Nanyang Business School |
| author_facet | Nanyang Business School Maas, Victor S. Yin, Huaxiang |
| author_sort | Maas, Victor S. |
| collection | NTU |
| description | In this paper, we investigate how increasing transparency about managers’ treatment of their employees affects the tendency of employees to initiate collusion. Building on behavioral economics theory, we argue that employees who are treated less kindly by their managers are more willing to initiate or join a collusive agreement. We hypothesize that internal transparency affects collusion in two ways. First, by revealing how kindly employees are treated by their managers, transparency increases or decreases the probability that individuals are singled out as potential “partners in crime.” Second, increasing transparency incentivizes managers to treat employees more kindly, which in turn reduces employees’ inclination to initiate collusion. The results of two experiments generally support the theory. We discuss the implications of our study for research and practice. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T04:17:36Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/152149 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T04:17:36Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1521492023-05-19T07:31:18Z Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion Maas, Victor S. Yin, Huaxiang Nanyang Business School Accounting Business::Accounting Reciprocity Collusion Fraud Internal Transparency Experiment In this paper, we investigate how increasing transparency about managers’ treatment of their employees affects the tendency of employees to initiate collusion. Building on behavioral economics theory, we argue that employees who are treated less kindly by their managers are more willing to initiate or join a collusive agreement. We hypothesize that internal transparency affects collusion in two ways. First, by revealing how kindly employees are treated by their managers, transparency increases or decreases the probability that individuals are singled out as potential “partners in crime.” Second, increasing transparency incentivizes managers to treat employees more kindly, which in turn reduces employees’ inclination to initiate collusion. The results of two experiments generally support the theory. We discuss the implications of our study for research and practice. Published version 2021-12-10T15:10:02Z 2021-12-10T15:10:02Z 2021 Journal Article Maas, V. S. & Yin, H. (2021). Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion. Accounting, Organizations and Society. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2021.101293 0361-3682 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/152149 10.1016/j.aos.2021.101293 en Accounting, Organizations and Society © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Business::Accounting Reciprocity Collusion Fraud Internal Transparency Experiment Maas, Victor S. Yin, Huaxiang Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion |
| title | Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion |
| title_full | Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion |
| title_fullStr | Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion |
| title_full_unstemmed | Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion |
| title_short | Finding partners in crime? How transparency about managers' behavior affects employee collusion |
| title_sort | finding partners in crime how transparency about managers behavior affects employee collusion |
| topic | Business::Accounting Reciprocity Collusion Fraud Internal Transparency Experiment |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/152149 |
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