Context and Aggregation: An Experimental Study of Bias and Discrimination in Organizational Decisions

This paper addresses a notable gap at the intersection of organizational economics and organization science: how does context influence aggregation individual behavior in decisions? Using basic centralized versus decentralized structures as building blocks for our experimental design, we examine whether assignment positions, incentive schemes, structural configuration induce endogenous adaptation form change reservation levels (bias) or modified discrimination capability subjects’ behavior. We found that evaluators adapted their structures, whereas they did not generally adapt when placed structures. identify mechanisms explain these findings; aggregate, behavior; discuss implications research practice.