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Agency Theory And Bounded Self Interest: The Moderating Role Of Fairness, Robert Phillips, Douglas Bosse

Robert Phillips

While agency theory’s contributions to our understanding of economic organization and strategic management are unparalleled, reviews of the empirical tests call for more explanatory muscle at the extremes. This paper provides arguments that answer that call. Relying on well-established findings from social psychology and other disciplines, we propose that agency theory’s assumption of pure self-interest be replaced with the more descriptively accurate assumption of self interest that is bounded by norms of fairness and reciprocity. The resulting arguments explain that perceptions of fairness/justice moderate the effectiveness of incentive alignment and monitoring mechanisms.