Work-report formats and overbilling: How unit-reporting vs. cost-reporting increases accountability and decreases overbilling

Desai, Sreedhari D.; Kouchaki, Maryam

doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.06.007

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 35 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is possible that when superiors form moral attributions regarding a subordinate due to exposure to moral symbols, they likely imagine how such an ethical employee would judge them if he or she were to find out how unethical the request was. Previous work has demonstrated that accountability modifies thought processes such that people become more critical of their future actions (Desai & Kouchaki, 2015;Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Thus, feelings of accountability may make unethical superiors avoid issuing the directive to an employee perceived as high moral character.…”

Section: Theoretical Background and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral Symbols: A Necklace of Garlic against Unethical Requests

Desai

Kouchaki²

2017

AMJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates whether by exposing superiors to moral symbols subordinates can discourage their superiors from asking them to perform unethical acts. Findings from five laboratory studies and one organizational survey study demonstrated that exposure to moral symbols displayed by the subordinates dissuades superiors from both engaging in unethical behaviors themselves and asking their subordinates to engage in unethical behavior. This paper shows that the display of moral symbols leads to two main consequences of (1) the activation of the concept of morality and increases in individuals' moral awareness to decrease unethical behavior, and (2) eliciting inferences about the moral character of the displayer to lower the likelihood of that person being subjected to unethical directives. Additionally, our findings demonstrate that moral symbols influence ethical decisions without provoking hidden backlash effects against those who display them. In sum, our findings show that followers can serve as a form of social influence to guide their leader's behavior and reduce the occurrence of unethical acts in the workplace.

show abstract

Section: Theoretical Background and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral Symbols: A Necklace of Garlic against Unethical Requests

Desai

Kouchaki²

2017

AMJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As always, generalization of experimental findings should be cautious, and subject to the accumulation of research that offers replications of the effect as well as identifying boundary conditions. For example, Desai and Kouchaki ( 2015 ) recently reported a study that seemed to favor the one-by-one policy over the all-at-once policy. In this study, an experimenter contacted garage mechanics to obtain an estimate for changing the brake pads of a car.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The findings showed that in this set-up, mechanics inflated costs less when they provided separate estimates for two different aspects of the job (i.e., parts, labor), than when they provided an overall cost estimate. The authors offered that specific estimates elicited higher accountability requiring mechanics to be able to justify their quotes (Desai and Kouchaki, 2015 , study 7). It is difficult to establish a direct comparison between offering a price quote to a client and reporting performance to an employer.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

One-by-One or All-at-Once? Self-Reporting Policies and Dishonesty

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Organizational monitoring relies frequently on self-reports (e.g., work hours, progress reports, travel expenses). A “one-by-one” policy requires employees to submit a series of reports (e.g., daily or itemized reports). An “all-at-once” policy requires an overall report (e.g., an annual or an overview report). Both policies use people's self-reports to determine their pay, and both allow people to inflate their reports to get higher incentives, that is, to cheat. Objectively, people can cheat to the same extent under both reporting policies. However, the two policies differ in that the segmented one-by-one policy signals closer monitoring than the all-at-once policy. We suggest here that lie aversion may have a paradoxical effect on closer monitoring and lead people to cheat more. Specifically, reporting a series of segmented units of performance (allowing small lies) should lead to more cheating than a one-shot report of overall performance (that require one larger lie). Two surveys indicated that while people perceive the all-at-once policy as more trusting, they still expected people would be equally likely to cheat in both policies. An experiment tested the effects of the two reporting policies on cheating. The findings showed that contrary to the participants' intuition, but in line with research on lie aversion, the one-by-one policy resulted in more cheating than the all-at-once policy. Implications for future research and organization policy are discussed.

show abstract

“…For example, Desai and Kouchaki (2015) hypothesized that framing a price request in terms of "units" (versus just an overall cost estimate) increases accountability to report more honestly, ultimately leading to lower (and more accurate) quoted prices. To test this hypothesis, research assistants (who were blind to the hypotheses) called up car garages to ask for an estimate for a repair on their car: when the request was framed by asking first about the costs for labor and parts and second about a good-faith estimate, the quoted price was significantly lower compared to a control condition, in which the request order was reversed -first asking a good-faith estimate, then for parts and labor.…”

Section: Audit Field Experiments (Afe)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation with field experiments: Studying organizational behaviors in actual organizations

Hauser¹,

Linos

Rogers³

2017

Research in Organizational Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Organizational scholarship centers on understanding organizational context, usually captured through field studies, as well as determining causality, typically with laboratory experiments. We argue that field experiments can bridge these approaches, bringing causality to field research and developing organizational theory in novel ways. We present a taxonomy that proposes when to use an audit field experiment (AFE), procedural field experiment (PFE) or innovation field experiment (IFE) in organizational research and argue that field experiments are more feasible than ever before. With advances in technology, behavioral data has become more available and randomized changes are easier to implement, allowing field experiments to more easily create value-and impact-for scholars and organizations alike.

show abstract

Work-report formats and overbilling: How unit-reporting vs. cost-reporting increases accountability and decreases overbilling

Cited by 11 publications

References 35 publications

Moral Symbols: A Necklace of Garlic against Unethical Requests

Moral Symbols: A Necklace of Garlic against Unethical Requests

One-by-One or All-at-Once? Self-Reporting Policies and Dishonesty

Innovation with field experiments: Studying organizational behaviors in actual organizations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About