Cornell University
Library
Cornell UniversityLibrary

eCommons

Help
Log In(current)
  1. Home
  2. Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
  3. Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration
  4. School of Hotel Administration Collection
  5. SHA Articles and Chapters
  6. How Does Peer Honesty Affect Focal Manager Honesty in a Budget Reporting Setting?

How Does Peer Honesty Affect Focal Manager Honesty in a Budget Reporting Setting?

File(s)
Paz2_How_does_peer_honesty.pdf (403.44 KB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/72171
Collections
SHA Articles and Chapters
Author
Paz, Michael
Reichert, Bernhard E.
Woods, Alex
Abstract

We examine the effect of peer honesty on focal manager honesty in a budget reporting setting. We disclose peer honesty to the focal manager at three levels: no, partial, and full disclosure of the reporting behavior of the other managers in the focal managers’ cohort. In partial disclosure, only the reports of the least honest peers are disclosed to the focal manager. In full disclosure, all managers’ reports in the cohort are disclosed to the focal manager. We predict and find that disclosure of other managers’ reports leads to less honesty compared to the absence of disclosure. We show that disclosure changes the focal manager’s perceptions of what constitutes acceptable reporting behavior, such that reporting more dishonestly becomes more acceptable. Our results have implications for understanding fraud dynamics and have practical implications for the design of control systems, as they suggest that managers will use peer dishonesty to justify their own dishonesty, even when they know that only some of their peers report dishonestly.

Date Issued
2013-01-01
Keywords
honesty
•
social norms
•
disclosure
•
contagion
Related DOI
https://doi.org/10.1108/S1475-1488(2013)0000016009
Rights
Required Publisher Statement: © Emerald. Final version published as: Paz, M., Reichert, B. E., and Woods, A. (2013). How does peer honesty affect focal manager honesty in a budget reporting setting? In D. B. Schmitt (Ed.), Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research: Vol. 16 (pp. 85-114). doi:10.1108/S1475-1488(2013)0000016009Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Type
article

Site Statistics | Help

About eCommons | Policies | Terms of use | Contact Us

copyright © 2002-2026 Cornell University Library | Privacy | Web Accessibility Assistance