Abstract
In this study, it was empirically tested the theoretical argument that when an organizational culture promotes meritocracy, managers may paradoxically show greater biases unrelated to performance. In addition, this study included analysis for a three-way interaction of compensation system, employee gender, and participant gender on reward allocations. If supported, this hypothesis would mean greater levels of the paradox of meritocracy effect for male participants compared to female participants. This study also took an empirical approach to examine whether written description of a compensation system would influence the amount of time spent on a performance evaluation task in an in-basket-style managerial simulation. 166 undergraduate psychology participants were randomly assigned to read a mission statement from an organization that promoted either merit or non-merit reward systems and then were instructed to complete various tasks, which included performance appraisals. The results from the data generally supported the hypotheses, except for the three-way interaction.