... and unambiguous candidate-specific information regarding who is the best for the job, the quality of the selected candidates is lower under a decentralized versus centralized selection process. We also find that nonpecuniary status concerns drive the effect. Results of two boundary conditions reveal...

... that superiors sympathize, through their bonus allocation decisions, with those agents confronted with greater performance risk. However, this behavior changes when superiors are responsible for allocating initial resources between the agents and have task-irrelevant reputational information concerning...