In this paper, we develop and test a behavioral theory of lost leadership. Using insights from the literature on goals as reference points and prospect theory, we predict that former leaders exert more effort compared to otherwise identical competitors. We test this prediction using two...

We study organizational search in the presence of intuitive biases. Drawing from work on the psychology of human decision making, we construe biases as unjustified preferences that arise due to automatic, spontaneous thinking. This property of decision making gives rise to a mechanism we label...

Recent decades have witnessed a growing focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality. Pay transparency is widely advanced as a remedy for both. Yet we know little about the systemic influence of this policy on the...

We study the behavioral drivers of market entry. An experiment allows us to disentangle the impact on entry across different types of markets of two key behavioral mechanisms: overconfidence and attitude toward ambiguity. We theorize and show that the causal effect of overconfidence on entry is...

We explore the performance consequences of the simultaneous pursuit of multiple objectives in organizations. Taking advantage of a unique dataset covering both the objectives pursued and performance outcomes, we test the hypothesis that is the cornerstone of multiple objective theory:...

We investigate the mechanisms that shape social comparison in organizations and generate social comparison costs. In particular, we focus on heterogeneity in the strength and type of incentives and argue that, from an efficient design perspective, such variance in rewards is a double-edged...

This paper explores conflicting implications of firm-specific human capital (FSHC) for firm performance. Existing theory predicts a productivity effect that can be enhanced with strong incentives. We propose an offsetting agency effect: FSHC may facilitate more sophisticated “gaming” of...