IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/stratm/v33y2012i10p1194-1214.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The psychological costs of pay‐for‐performance: Implications for the strategic compensation of employees

Author

Listed:
  • Ian Larkin
  • Lamar Pierce
  • Francesca Gino

Abstract

Most research linking compensation to strategy relies on agency theory economics and focuses on executive pay. We instead focus on the strategic compensation of nonexecutive employees, arguing that while agency theory provides a useful framework for analyzing compensation, it fails to consider several psychological factors that increase costs from performance‐based pay. We examine how psychological costs from social comparison and overconfidence reduce the efficacy of individual performance‐based compensation, building a theoretical framework predicting more prominent use of team‐based, seniority‐based, and flatter compensation. We argue that compensation is strategic not only in motivating and attracting the worker being compensated but also in its impact on peer workers and the firm's complementary activities. The paper discusses empirical implications and possible theoretical extensions of the proposed integrated theory. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Ian Larkin & Lamar Pierce & Francesca Gino, 2012. "The psychological costs of pay‐for‐performance: Implications for the strategic compensation of employees," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(10), pages 1194-1214, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:33:y:2012:i:10:p:1194-1214
    DOI: 10.1002/smj.1974
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.1974
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/smj.1974?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:33:y:2012:i:10:p:1194-1214. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/0143-2095 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.