Although managers’ green investments have no impact on future cash flows in our experimental markets, investors respond favorably when managers make and disclose an investment and highlight the societal benefits rather than the cost to the company. Managers anticipate investors’ reaction and therefore often disclose their investment and the associated societal benefits. Managers and other shareholders benefit from investors’ reaction, but the investment cost always exceeds this benefit, demonstrating that managers make green investments because they value the societal benefits. Collectively, our findings show that both investors and managers tradeoff wealth for societal benefits and help explain managers’ corporate social responsibilty disclosures.

Firms have increasingly adopted open work environments. Although openness is thought to have benefits, it could also expose firms to an unanticipated cost. An open (closed) internal reporting environment makes it more (less) likely that managers will observe a colleague's communications with senior executives. This increase in what one manager knows about another manager's communication to senior executives could facilitate employee collusion to extract resources from the firm. To test whether internal reporting openness results in more collusion, we conduct an experiment in which two managers each make separate reports to the firm about cost information they know in common but that remains unknown by the firm. Because both managers face the same truth‐inducing contract, conventional economic theory predicts that they will not collude to misreport costs regardless of reporting openness. However, using behavioral theory involving trust and reciprocity, we predict and find that managers honor their nonbinding collusive agreements and successfully collude more often in an open versus closed internal reporting environment, leading to lower firm welfare in the open environment. These results suggest that firms should consider how the cost of collusion compares to the benefits of openness.