THE EFFECT OF FAIRNESS IN CONTRACTING ON THE CREATION OF BUDGETARY SLACK

This paper explores the relationship between fairness in contracting and the creation of budgetary slack. A laboratory experiment was performed in which privately informed subjects were compensated under either a truth-inducing or slack-inducing incentive contract. Contracting processes were either fair or unfair as defined by procedural justice theory (Leventhal, 1980; Lind & Tyler, 1988). Under the slack-inducing contract, subjects exposed to the fair contracting process created significantly less slack than subjects exposed to the unfair contracting process. Slack created by subjects compensated under the truth-inducing contract was low and insensitive to the fairness or unfairness of the contracting process employed.