Tune into “The Apprentice” television show, and you get an all-too-common view of business. Every week, all of the wannabe moguls try to impress Donald Trump by preening, cajoling, and conniving. In this world, toughness is the measure of every CEO, and the boss glories in firing people and squeezing every penny out of suppliers.

Yet, according to Wharton marketing professors John Zhang and Jagmohan Raju, and Tony Haitao Cui, a University of Minnesota marketing and logistics professor, many people aren’t purely mercenary in their business dealings. They care about fairness, and they should, the researchers say, because doing so can maximize their profits.

A manufacturer and a retailer can end up making more money if they’re fair minded, setting prices with an eye to achieving an equitable outcome in their joint marketing channel as opposed to merely maximizing their individual profits, Zhang, Raju, and Cui argue in a paper recently published in Management Sciencetitled, “Fairness and Channel Coordination.”

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