Should a high-performing employee receive a company’s limited opportunities for training and development, or should those funds go to lower performers to ensure they catch up? The answer may in part rely on a workplace’s culture and “fairness norms,” per a study published Sept. 20 in the Journal of Accounting Research.

In a more egalitarian workplace with more structured expectations around roles, lower-performing workers expected such training. But in a more meritocratic workplace with more freedom around choosing tasks, higher performers tended to feel more slighted when passed over for training, per the research.

Managers may struggle with this decision in part because of what training represents and what doors it can open up, Martin Wiernsperger, assistant professor of accounting at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, said in a press release Sept. 21. Training is often an opportunity to travel and network and can increase a worker’s future marketability, Wiernsperger noted.

But from a manager’s perspective, a lower-performing worker might gain more from the experience and have more room for growth compared to those already performing well.

The experiment described in the research had participants split into three-person groups, and take two quizzes on English and German idioms; some groups could choose which quiz to take, representing a meritocratic environment, while others were given a quiz at random to represent a more egalitarian norm. Afterwards, the participant who was designated as the manager in the group would pick a person to take a “training,” or assistance with the German idioms, depending on the results.

Under egalitarian norms, lower performers tended to say they felt more slighted when they did not receive training. But under meritocratic norms, higher performers reacted more negatively to not receiving the training.

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