Can process accountability mitigate myopic biases? An experimental analysis

Mina Ličen () and Sergeja Slapničar ()
Additional contact information
Mina Ličen: University of Ljubljana
Sergeja Slapničar: The University of Queensland Business School, Australia

Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, 2022, vol. 33, issue 1, No 1, 26 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the impact of process accountability on two biases causing myopic or short-sighted decision making. These biases are strong preferences for immediate and certain outcomes known as delay and risk aversion. We hypothesize that accountability alone is insufficient to undo the biases, but if coupled with a cue on subjective discount rates, it will attenuate biases. To analyze our research question, we used a within- and between-subjects experimental design (two accountability conditions compared with a non-accountability condition and with each other) with delay and probability discounting choice tasks involving 118 students of accounting, finance and management in an online experiment. In line with our hypotheses, we find that process accountability successfully reduces excessive delay and risk aversion only if it provides a cue about the subjective discount rate. We discuss the implications of our findings for management control.

Keywords: Process accountability; Justification pressure; Cognitive bias; Myopic decision-making; Delay aversion; Risk aversion; Time preference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D87 M41 M48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00187-021-00330-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jmgtco:v:33:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s00187-021-00330-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/187

DOI: 10.1007/s00187-021-00330-7

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung is currently edited by Thomas Günther

More articles in Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().