Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/338956 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Citation: 
[Journal:] Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research (SBUR) [ISSN:] 2366-6153 [Volume:] 77 [Issue:] 4 [Year:] 2025 [Pages:] 915-944
Publisher: 
Springer, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
This study uses an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the effects of accountability on favoritism in subjective performance evaluations. We develop and test theory suggesting that the effectiveness of accountability to alleviate favoritism depends on managers' cognitive processing of performance information. We argue that accountability will induce managers to examine performance information more thoroughly, which may entail having to scrutinize information that reflects unfavorable on preferred subordinates, thus causing cognitive dissonance. To resolve this dissonance, managers can engage in motivated reasoning by cognitively discounting such information. The more managers reduce cognitive dissonance by discounting unfavorable information, the lesser is the favoritism-mitigating effect of accountability. Consistent with this prediction, our results show that the higher the proportion of cognitive processing effort managers devote to information that reflects unfavorable on a preferred subordinate, the lower the efficacy of accountability in mitigating favoritism. We contribute by enhancing our understanding of the effects of accountability in subjective performance evaluations.
Subjects: 
Accountability
Cognitive processing
Eye-tracking
Favoritism
Subjective performance evaluation
JEL: 
M12
M49
M52
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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