Reciprocity over time: Do employees respond more to kind or unkind controls?

Abstract

Reciprocity plays a critical role in the way employees respond to managerial control decisions. The current consensus is that employees punish managers for implementing unkind controls (negative reciprocity) more than they reward managers for implementing kind controls (positive reciprocity). We challenge this consensus. Prior research focuses on settings that emphasize employees' immediate reciprocal responses. However, in the workplace, employees often respond over long periods of time to sticky control decisions (e.g., budgets, pay, decision rights). Focusing on these long-term settings, we predict and find that, while negative reciprocity is initially stronger than positive reciprocity, it also fades more over time than positive reciprocity. This differential fading is so pronounced in our setting that positive reciprocity is stronger overall in the long run. Thus, in long-term settings, positive responses to kind controls may play a more important role than negative responses to unkind controls. Our results inform managerial decisions about the use of kind versus unkind controls and suggest potential long-term benefits of pay disparity and other policies that treat employees differentially.