On the folly of punishing A while hoping for A: Exploring punishment in organizations

• Author: Charles C. Manz,Bruce C. Skaggs,Craig L. Pearce,Matthew C.B. Lyle
• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2287
• Published date: 01 July 2018

THE INCUBATOR

On the folly of punishing A while hoping for A: Exploring

punishment in organizations

Bruce C. Skaggs |Charles C. Manz |Matthew C.B. Lyle |Craig L. Pearce

Isenberg School of Management, University

of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts,

U.S.A.

Correspondence

Matthew C. B. Lyle, Isenberg School of

Management, University of Massachusetts,

Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Email: mattlyle11@gmail.com

Summary

This Incubator complements Kerr's classic writing, extended by recent articles by

Wright and colleagues, “On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B.”Here,

we focus on the potentially even more extreme, self‐sabotaging folly of punishing A

while hoping for A (i.e., the behaviors and outcomes organizations want most).

KEYWORDS

competence, moral hypocrisy, punishment,risk taking

1|INTRODUCTION

Kerr, in his seminal article, “On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hop-

ing for B,”explained how many organizations reward the wrong

behaviors. In this Incubator, we extend Kerr's insights by calling for

greater scholarly attention to how organizations, intentionally or unin-

tentionally, punish the very behaviors they claim to want from their

employees. Our interest stems from what we see as the implicit view

by researchers and practitioners (despite earlier research to the con-

trary—e.g., Podsakoff, Todor, & Skov, 1982; Sims Jr. & Manz, 1984)

that reward and punishment are merely two sides of the same coin,

or different mechanisms that have similar results and impacts. We

argue that rewards and punishments, particularly in organizations, dif-

fer in fundamental ways that can significantly impact organizations

and the people in them. Therefore, we begin by briefly touching upon

three notable differences between rewards and punishments to high-

light the unique nature of punishment. We then build on this discus-

sion by explaining how organizations often intentionally, or

unintentionally, punish A while hoping for A. We end with a discussion

of future research directions meant to highlight the need for greater

scholarly focus on punishment in organizations. We begin by address-

ing the unique nature of punishment below.

1.1 |The unique nature of punishment

The first difference we see between reward and punishment involves

the asymmetric impact of punishment relative to rewards. There is a

great deal of research showing that people place much greater empha-

sis and attention on negative versus positive consequences (Kahne-

man, 2003; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992). For example, Rozin and

Royzman (2001) studied at length the general concept of negativity

bias (negative factors receiving greater weight than positive),

reviewing supporting evidence from literary, historical, religious, and

cultural sources. They also drew on a variety of psychological litera-

tures pertaining to processes as wide‐ranging as learning, attention,

impression formation, moral judgment, development, and memory to

conclude that negative entities are both more dominant and conta-

gious than positive ones.

The second, and related, difference between punishment and

reward concerns the relative length of their impact. Because individ-

uals tend to place greater attention on avoiding negative outcomes

than striving for positive ones, it is likely that the impact of punish-

ment will have a far more lasting effect on organization members (Tay-

lor, 1991). Together, these two aspects of punishment suggest that

punishment can have a stronger, more immediate impact on members'

behaviors that can lock in those behaviors for a longer period of time.

The effects of punishment, then, will likely act as a greater motivator

(or possibly de‐motivator) for members than rewards.

The third and most concerning difference between rewards and

punishments relates to their creation. Whereas reward systems tend

to be highly formalized and codified, punishments seem to be more

informal and somewhat idiosyncratic in nature (Gonzalez & Pérez‐

Floriano, 2015). Over 40 years of scholarship on reward systems sug-

gests that organizations devote a great deal of time to constructing

and communicating both what their rewards are and how they will

be dispensed (e.g., Nyberg, Pieper, & Trevor, 2016). However, far less

evidence exists suggesting that organizations codify guidelines for

punishing members. Without formal instructions on how to punish

members, punishment may well be determined by individual man-

agers. Such individualized punishment opens the door to behavior on

Received: 12 March 2018 Accepted: 25 March 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2287

812 Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2018;39:812–815.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job