"With my research collaborators in Canada and Norway, we investigated whether and why one specific bonus system used at a videogame company generated bad behaviors. Specifically, we looked at whether bonuses could make game developers disconnect from their moral standards and behave unethically-by lying, turning a blind eye to questionable behaviors, cheating, taking the credit for someone else's performance, displacing blame, or cutting corners."
"Individual bonus calculations included weights based on yearly individual performance appraisals and job levels. Overall, this is quite a typical corporate bonus system; game developers could reach yearly amounts up to $50,000! But here is the catch: A large portion of developers were working on games that had not hit the market yet, which meant they would only achieve a bonus once the game launched, which could take several years."
Bonuses were calculated as a percentage of game profits with individual weights based on yearly appraisals and job levels, producing limited increases in developer motivation. Many developers worked on unreleased games, making large portions of potential bonuses uncertain and deferred for years. HR records and a large employee survey of 1,024 game developers were combined to assess whether motivation stemmed from rewards or intrinsic interest and whether bonuses provoked moral disengagement. Ambiguous or anticipated large rewards correlated with increased moral disengagement and tendencies to cut corners, cheat, or misattribute credit. Past bonuses did not reliably predict future ethical behavior or sustained motivation.
Read at Psychology Today
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