The psychological costs of pay‐for‐performance: Implications for the strategic compensation of employees
指出代理理论忽视了社会比较和过度自信等心理因素，这些因素会增加绩效薪酬的成本，从而影响非高管员工的战略薪酬设计，提出团队薪酬、资历薪酬和扁平化薪酬更有效。
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.