The Unexplored Territory Linking Rewards and Ethical Behavior

Rewards research typically examines how well incentives increase employees' productivity. By comparison, research in business ethics research focuses more on employees' ethical behavior than on their productivity per se. Yet, despite the bounty of literature in these two areas, little research specifically (a) links incentives to (un)ethical behavior and (b) focuses on relationships other than that between the employee-employer. This article reviews this neglect in detail, urges that future research address these gaps, and proposes a diagnostic model for use by scholars to guide this future research and by practitioners to implement rewards in their organizations.