Decreasing Operational Distortion and Surrogation Through Narrative Reporting
研究发现，当代理人可以为其行为提供不可验证的叙事解释时，他们会减少运营决策扭曲和替代行为。实验表明，向老板提供解释的象棋玩家更倾向于全面考虑棋局，而非仅关注客观指标。
ABSTRACT Prior research finds that agents who are compensated on an imperfect measure of performance tend to distort their operational decisions and believe that the measure is more reflective of reality than it actually is (i.e., they surrogate). I find that agents distort decisions less and surrogate less when they can provide unverifiable narrative explanations for their actions. In my experiment, experienced chess players place bets on and write explanations about in-progress chess games. I manipulate whether participants give their explanations to their boss (who allocates a subjective bonus) when working as an agent. Participants who give explanations are more likely to make bets that reflect all dimensions of a chess position, rather than making bets that favor only the objective measure. They are also less likely to surrogate and are more likely to write about unmeasurable aspects of the games when subsequently making bets on their own behalf.