Women still earn less than men on average in Germany. This applies to management positions even more: between 2010 and 2016, there was an average gender pay gap of 30 percent in gross hourly earnings. If gender-specific differences in relevant wage determinants are excluded, a pay gap of 11...

This paper studies, in a world with differing priors, the role of organizational beliefs and managerial vision in the behavior and performance of corporations. The paper defines vision operationally as a very strong belief by the manager about the right course of action for the firm. The...

This paper provides novel evidence on the effects of employee stock ownership (ESO), a prominent example of shared capitalism. In so doing, we take advantage of our access to new panel data on Japanese ESO plans for a highly representative sample of publicly-traded firms in Japan (covering more...

Our review of the evidence found that the notion that higher pay leads to the selection of better executives is undermined by the prevalence of poor recruiting methods. Moreover, higher pay fails to promote better performance. Instead, it undermines the intrinsic motivation of executives,...

Contemporary career research assumes more flexible career patterns implying increased job mobility. However, there is growing doubt that the proclaimed change is as drastic as has been suggested. We provide empirical evidence on career expectations in Germany between 1999 and 2009, arguing that...

We explore why authority within firms helps trading parties immediately settle ex post adaptation problems despite the possibility of a subordinate's disobedience to the orders of his boss. By employing three crucial behavioral assumptions (reference-dependent preference, self-serving bias, and...

In this paper I present a theory of the boundary of the firm that accounts for some important characteristics of real-world multidivisional firms: Operative decisions are in the hands of middle managers who are rewarded with incentive contracts based on the performance of their units; Managers'...

Classic financial agency theory recommends compensation through stock options rather than shares to induce risk neutrality in otherwise risk averse agents. In an experiment, we find that subjects acting as executives do also take risks that are excessive from the perspective of shareholders if...

The Eroding Trust in Capitalism and its Consequences for Law: On both sides of the Atlantic, legislators consider a cap on manager income. As a redistributive intervention, the cap would be misplaced. It affects such a small number of persons that the effect on the Gini coefficient would be...

The conceptual base of behavioural preferences for leadership can be found in Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs). In a series of three studies, we examined both ILTs and expectations for leader behaviour for the purpose of examining the degree of fit between ILTs and associated expectations. In...