In an environment where individual productivity can be increased through efforts directed at a conventional task approach and more efficient task approaches that can be identified through unconventional thinking, we examine the effects of productivity-target difficulty and pay contingent on...

We examine how clawback provisions and board monitoring affect managers' use of discretion to achieve earnings targets. Using an experiment, we find that when board monitoring is weak, imposing clawback provisions has little impact on the total amount of earnings management activity. This null...