In their paper “How Economic Incentives Destroy Social, Ecological and Existential Values—The Case of Executive Compensation” (Journal of Business Ethics 123, pp. 353–360 (2014)) Knut J. Ims, Lars Jacob Pedersen and Laszlo Zsolnai argue that one-dimensional economic incentives may destroy the social, ecological and existential values that influence a manager’s commitment to ensure responsible business conduct and will therefore have negative spillover effects that may reduce managerial performance.
There are well-documented findings that demonstrate that reliance on extrinsic motivation (such as economic incentives) may displace intrinsic motivation. The authors explore the influence of extrinsic motivation on the manager’s intrinsic commitment to different types of values and investigate how this may influence the ethical reflections and behavior of managers.
The full paper can be seen here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-013-1844-6