Van den Bos, K., Bruins, J., Wilke, H. A., &Dronkert, E. (1999). Sometimes unfair procedures have nice aspects: On the psychology of the fair process effect.

This article focuses on the psychology of the fair process effect (the frequently replicated finding that perceived procedural fairness positively affects people’s reactions). It is argued that when people receive an unfavorable outcome, they may start looking for causes that explain why they received this outcome. Furthermore, the authors propose that unfair procedures provide an …

Benz, M., &Stutzer, A. (2002). Do workers enjoy procedural utility?. Applied Economics Quarterly 49(2), 149-172.

People are likely to obtain utility not only from actual outcomes, but also from the conditions which lead to these outcomes. This paper empirically tests the notion of procedural utility for the context of work relationships. Using a large survey among British workers, we find substantial procedural effects on the utility workers derive from their …

Stutzer, A., &Lalive, R. (2004). The role of social work norms in job searching and subjective well-being. Journal of the European Economic Association, 2(4), 696-719.

Social norms are usually neglected in economics, because they are to a large extent enforced through nonmarket interactions and difficult to isolate empirically. In this paper, we offer a direct measure of the social norm to work and we show that this norm has important economic effects. The stronger the norm, the more quickly unemployed …

Kahneman, D., Wakker, P. P., &Sarin, R. (1997). Back to Bentham? Explorations of experienced utility.

Two core meanings of “utility” are distinguished. “Decision utility” is the weight of an outcome in a decision. “Experienced utility” is hedonic quality, as in Bentham’s usage. Experienced utility can be reported in real time (instant utility), or in retrospective evaluations of past episodes (remembered utility). Psychological research has documented systematic errors in retrospective evaluations, …

Wilson, T. D., &Schooler, J. W. (1991). Thinking too much: introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions.Journal of personality and social psychology, 60(2), 181-192.

In Study 1, 49 college students’ preferences for different brands of strawberry jams were compared with experts’ ratings of the jams. Students who analyzed why they felt the way they did agreed less with the experts than students who did not. In Study 2, 243 college students’ preferences for college courses were compared with expert …

Ross, M. (1989). Relation of implicit theories to the construction of personal histories. Psychological Review, 96(2), 341-357.

It is hypothesized that people possess implicit theories regarding the inherent consistency of their attributes, as well as a set of principles concerning the conditions that are likely to promote personal change or stability. The nature of these theories is discussed in the context of a study of beliefs about life-span development. It is then …

Frey, B. S., &Osterloh, M. (2005). Yes, managers should be paid like bureaucrats. Journal of Management Inquiry, 14(1), 96-111.

Corporate scandals, reflected in excessive management compensation and fraudulent accounts, cause great damage. Agency theory’s insistence to link the compensation of managers and directors as closely as possible to firm performance is a major reason for these scandals. They cannot be overcome by improving variable pay for performance as selfish extrinsic motivation is reinforced. Based …

Osterloh, M., &Frey, B. S. (2006). Shareholders should welcome knowledge workers as directors. Journal of Management &Governance, 10(3), 325-345.

The most influential approach of corporate governance, the view of shareholders’ supremacy does not take into consideration that the key task of modern corporations is to generate and transfer firm-specific knowledge. It proposes that, in order to overcome the widespread corporate scandals, the interests of top management and directors should be increasingly aligned to shareholder’ …

Loewenstein, G., O& #39;Donoghue, T., &Rabin, M. (2003). Projection bias in predicting future utility. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4), 1209-1248.

People exaggerate the degree to which their future tastes will resemble their current tastes. We present evidence from a variety of domains which demonstrates the prevalence of such projection bias, develop a formal model of it, and use this model to demonstrate its importance in economic environments. We show that, when people exhibit habit formation, …