Desert and inequity aversion in teams

Teams are becoming increasingly important in work settings. We develop a framework to study the strategic implications of a meritocratic notion of desert under which team members care about receiving what they feel they deserve. Team members find it painful to receive less than their perceived entit...

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Main Authors: Gill, D, Stone, R
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2014
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author Gill, D
Stone, R
author_facet Gill, D
Stone, R
author_sort Gill, D
collection OXFORD
description Teams are becoming increasingly important in work settings. We develop a framework to study the strategic implications of a meritocratic notion of desert under which team members care about receiving what they feel they deserve. Team members find it painful to receive less than their perceived entitlement, while receiving more may induce pleasure or pain depending on whether their preferences exhibit desert elation or desert guilt. Our notion of desert generalizes distributional concern models to situations in which effort choices affect the distribution perceived to be fair; in particular, desert nests inequity aversion over money net of effort costs as a special case. When identical teammates share team output equally, desert guilt generates a continuum of symmetric equilibria. Equilibrium effort can lie above or below the level in the absence of desert, so desert guilt generates behavior consistent with both positive and negative reciprocity and may underpin social norms of cooperation.
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spelling oxford-uuid:7b6345b7-de99-460a-b152-5b6fba606ca42024-10-21T09:59:01ZDesert and inequity aversion in teamsJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:7b6345b7-de99-460a-b152-5b6fba606ca4EnglishORA DepositElsevier2014Gill, DStone, RTeams are becoming increasingly important in work settings. We develop a framework to study the strategic implications of a meritocratic notion of desert under which team members care about receiving what they feel they deserve. Team members find it painful to receive less than their perceived entitlement, while receiving more may induce pleasure or pain depending on whether their preferences exhibit desert elation or desert guilt. Our notion of desert generalizes distributional concern models to situations in which effort choices affect the distribution perceived to be fair; in particular, desert nests inequity aversion over money net of effort costs as a special case. When identical teammates share team output equally, desert guilt generates a continuum of symmetric equilibria. Equilibrium effort can lie above or below the level in the absence of desert, so desert guilt generates behavior consistent with both positive and negative reciprocity and may underpin social norms of cooperation.
spellingShingle Gill, D
Stone, R
Desert and inequity aversion in teams
title Desert and inequity aversion in teams
title_full Desert and inequity aversion in teams
title_fullStr Desert and inequity aversion in teams
title_full_unstemmed Desert and inequity aversion in teams
title_short Desert and inequity aversion in teams
title_sort desert and inequity aversion in teams
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