Managerial Incentives in Organizations: Economic, Political, and Symbolic Perspectives

It may be only a slight exaggeration to suggest that the topic of incentives in organizations-particularly managerial incentives-has received more sustained attention from a more diverse set of scholars, consultants, and business reporters than any other topic relevant to the functioning of organizations. Given these circumstances, our objective is to explain what appears to be a fundamental paradox: namely, that the massive amount of attention devoted to the topic of managerial incentives has not led to any corresponding growing consensus. Indeed, the opposite seems to be true.