Inequity aversion, incentives, and personal norms: The effects on budget preparation and use

We examine two features of control environments expected to affect the honesty of budget submissions by subordinates and their use by managers for planning purposes. First, we predict that subordinates’ awareness of incentives available to their managers that they are not eligible to share in, is likely to induce inequity aversion and dishonest budgeting. However, we expect the egocentric bias will make managers insensitive to this increased dishonesty when using budgets for planning purposes. Second, we predict that making subordinates eligible to participate in incentives available to their managers will activate a personal norm of other-regarding behavior resulting in more honest budgeting. Third, we predict that managers whose subordinates are eligible to share in their incentives will recognize factors motivating their subordinates’ behavior and, as a result, rely more on their budget submissions for planning purposes. Experimental results confirm all predictions. Implications for practice and research are discussed.