Universität zu Köln

Cassar, Lea and Klein, Arnd H. (2019). A Matter of Perspective: How Failure Shapes Distributive Preferences. Manage. Sci., 65 (11). S. 5050 - 5065. CATONSVILLE: INFORMS. ISSN 1526-5501

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Abstract

People vary in what they view as a fair distribution of earnings in organizations and, more generally, society. Where do these different views originate? We study the question of whether the experience of failure or success in a winner-take-most competition shapes people's perspectives about distributive justice. In a laboratory experiment, subjects generated a high or low income either through a lottery or through a performance-based tournament. A subset of subjects could then redistribute the income of another subset of subjects. We find that the tournament losers redistribute significantly more than all of the other distributors when the inequality is generated by the tournament, whereas the lottery losers redistribute significantly more than all of the other distributors when the inequality is generated by the lottery. The effect still holds when controlling for potential self-selection into different outcomes of the tournament. We replicate the results in a second experiment and show that the underlying psychological mechanisms include an in-group bias and a self-serving bias in responsibility attribution. These findings have implications for the design of compensation schemes in organizations and for public policies in general.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Cassar, Lea UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Klein, Arnd H. UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-129368
DOI:	10.1287/mnsc.2018.3185
Journal or Publication Title:	Manage. Sci.
Volume:	65
Number:	11
Page Range:	S. 5050 - 5065
Date:	2019
Publisher:	INFORMS
Place of Publication:	CATONSVILLE
ISSN:	1526-5501
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language SELF-SERVING BIASES; FAIRNESS; REDISTRIBUTION; ATTRIBUTION; COMPETITION; AVERSION; FACT; LUCK Multiple languages Management; Operations Research & Management Science Multiple languages
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/12936