In a principal–agent model, we find that firms may not always benefit from the relative concerns of agents if such concerns are heterogeneous. Further, accounting for the influence of the environment on such concerns, profits are reduced relative to the no-comparisons benchmark.

We argue that the intensity of competition within a group or organization can have an important influence on whether or not people cheat. To make this point we first work through a simple model of strategic misreporting in the workplace. For low and high levels of competition we show that, in...