The Dark Side of Competition for Status
通过实验研究在固定工资环境下，为提升排名而采取的破坏和作弊行为，发现排名反馈虽提高平均努力水平，但也助长了不道德行为，破坏行为对绩效有强烈负面影响。
Unethical behavior within organizations is not rare. We investigate experimentally the role of status-seeking behavior in sabotage and cheating activities aiming at improving one's performance ranking in a flat-wage environment. We find that average effort is higher when individuals are informed about their relative performance. However, ranking feedback also favors disreputable behavior. Some individuals do not hesitate to incur a cost to improve their rank by sabotaging others' work or by increasing artificially their own performance. Introducing sabotage opportunities has a strong detrimental effect on performance. Therefore, ranking incentives should be used with care. Inducing group identity discourages sabotage among peers but increases in-group rivalry. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1747 . This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.