Envy, Comparison Costs, and the Economic Theory of the Firm

By Jackson Nickerson, Todd R. Zenger. 2008

309 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8f5f5cf56462e889f61453b68c5489c6736b7f9b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

In Safety Research

Citations in the corpus

Lying to Level the Playing Field: Why People May Dishonestly Help or Hurt Others to Create Equity (2010, background): “Nickerson and Zenger (2008) have argued that inequality in earnings within firms can create envy among workers that reduces effort, increases attrition, and creates the potential for sabotage.”
How Firms Shape Income Inequality: Stakeholder Power, Executive Decision Making, and the Structuring of Employment Relationships (2015, background): “By outsourcing, firms can keep the wages and conditions of employment closer to market rates without disrupting norms of equity (Cappelli, 1999; Nickerson & Zenger, 2008).”
The Employment Relationship and Inequality: How and Why Changes in Employment Practices are Reshaping Rewards in Organizations (2013, background): “Firms can then reduce the pay of less rewarded functions to external market rates or increase the pay of the most rewarded functions (Abraham, 1990; Baron & Pfeffer, 1994; Nickerson & Zenger, 2008).”
Dominant designs, innovation shocks, and the follower's dilemma (2015, background): “The high comparative adjustment costs arise because such firms find it difficult to support new ventures with special incentives and other governance arrangements (Nickerson and Zenger, 2008; Williamson, 1985).”
The abundance effect: Unethical behavior in the presence of wealth (2009, unknown): “Prior work has argued that envy has major implications for individual behavior in organizations, including effort, attrition, and sabotage (Ma & Nickerson, 2007; Nickerson & Zenger, 2008).”
Moving Opportunism to the Back Seat: Bounded Rationality, Costly Conflict, and Hierarchical Forms (2016, background): “4 In other work Nickerson and Zenger (2008) illustrate the impact that social comparison, a boundedly rational cognitive process, has on the boundaries of the firm.”
Awards: A strategic management perspective (2016, background): “The degree of team production moreover shapes the social comparison processes within the company (Nickerson and Zenger, 2008: 1437).”
Microfoundations for Strategy: A Goal-Framing Perspective on the Drivers of Value Creation (2013, unknown): “Specifically, such research either starts from purely cognitive foundations (Gavetti, 2005; Teece, 2007; Powell, Lovallo & Fox, 2011: 1370) or from purely motivational foundations (e.g., Abell, Felin, & Foss, 2008; 3 Gottschalg & Zollo, 2007; Wang & Barney, 2008; Nickerson & Zenger, 2008).”
The Intensity of Incentives in Firms and Markets: Moral Hazard With Envious Agents (2010, unknown): “In a related paper, Nickerson and Zenger (2008) also argue that while transaction costs in the market generate a tendency towards integration, “social comparison costs prompt managers to limit the degree of integration and otherwise take costly organizational actions to restrict and efficiently mana”
Understanding Agency Problems in Headquarters-Subsidiary Relationships in Multinational Corporations: A Contextualized Model (2018, background): “Too much customization, however, might create inefficiencies or even equity concerns amongst subsidiaries (Nickerson & Zenger, 2008).”
Cheating more for less: Upward social comparisons motivate the poorly compensated to cheat (2014, unknown): “Nickerson and Zenger (2008) argue that wide variance in wages within organizations creates ‘‘social comparison costs’’ (e.g., reduced effort, lack of cooperation) that can outweigh the benefits of better performance among the highly compensated.”
Theories of the Firm-Market Boundary (2011, unknown): “For example, the effort to more tightly couple rewards with effort likely elevates variance in pay which leads to unintended costs associated with envy and social comparison (Nickerson & Zenger, 2008), or cause friction in relationships and joint production (cf. Pfeffer & Langton, 1993).”
The Small Firm Effect and the Entrepreneurial Spawning of Scientists and Engineers (2010, background): “Comparison of the firm size coefficients in columns (1a) and (1b) shows that the relationship between firm size and changing jobs is quite different than the relationship between firm size and subsequent entry into self-employment.”