Stealing ideas at the workplace

Table of Content

ABSTRACT

1. INTRODUCTION

2. THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
2.1 The role of subliminal priming
2.2 Willingness to take credit without and with escalating severity of consequences
2.3 Perceived ethical costs
2.4 Perception of others’ mindset

3. METHODOLOGY

4. RESULTS
4.1 Quantitative results
4.2 Qualitative results

5. DISCUSSION

6. LIMITATIONS

7. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

APPENDIX
Material used in the experiment
Table 1: Correlations
Table 2: Means and Standard Deviations

REFERENCES

Abstract

This study aims to show that situational cues like semantic primes are able to influence a participantʼs decision-making in the context of taking credit for someone elseʼs idea at the workplace. In a laboratory experiment either a competitive, cooperative or neutral environment was simulated by using subliminal priming techniques. Participants were then exposed to a hypothetical scenario in which they were urged – due to their heavy workload – to take credit for a colleagueʼs idea. In particular, the study examined four constructs: the participantsʼ willingness to take credit for this idea without and with escalating consequences for not choosing to do it, the perceived ethical costs related to that action and the perception of others mindsets. It was expected that participants in the competitive condition would be more willing to take credit for the colleagueʼs idea and perceive less ethical costs than in the neutral condition and vice versa for the participants in the cooperative condition. Additionally, the study expected the participants to perceive the mindset of a random other in the same situation to be similar to their own mindset. Furthermore, qualitative data was collected to explore the decision-making process in such a situation. The results showed that situational cues did not significantly influence the individual decision-making in this particular context. However, several unexpected findings about the relationships between the tested constructs deliver valuable implications for future research on the topic of taking credit for other peopleʼs ideas. In addition, the findings from the qualitative analysis suggest that future studies have to differentiate between ethical and utilitarian considerations to gain further insights into the individual decision-making process.

1. Introduction

In his book “The rise of the knowledge worker” James Cortada (1998) describes the change in industrialized and increasingly computerized countries: More and more workers are required not to manufacture new goods anymore, but to provide knowledge and information to those who still do. In fact, with the manufacturing industries declining and the shift to service and knowledge sectors in developed countries, the importance of generating new ideas and innovation has risen over the last decades (Schettkat/Yocarini 2003).

With increasing importance of ideas, they more and more pose a competitive advantage for workers who have ideas over those who donʼt. Following this thought, Wang and Noe (2010:

124) found in the literature about knowledge sharing that ideas can act as positive factors in oneʼs performance evaluation and thus in promotions, bonuses and other forms of personal gains. They also mention that employees in possession of valuable ideas will tend to guard them and thus keep their status as an expert in a particular area. As with any other resource, individuals who are in need of a valuable idea, but are not able to obtain it for whatever reason, might be tempted to illegally take credit for an idea of another person. A popular example for this poses the former German Minister of Defence, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who was recently stripped of doctorate due to plagiarism. He justified the substantial copying with his heavy workload as member of the German parliament while raising his two daughters (Pidd 2011).

The present study is primary concerned with the temptation to take credit for a colleagueʼs idea when unable to cope with oneʼs own job demands in competitive or in cooperative work environments. Thereby, it is important to clearly distinguish ideas from intellectual property. Intellectual property rights can only be claimed by the author of an idea if the respective idea has taken form in some way, e.g. as a drawing or a picture of an invention (patent, trade mark), a physical appearance (design) or a written document (copyright) that is then officially registered (Intellectual Property Office 2007). Thus, in contrast to intellectual property, it remains debatable if it is theft to take credit for an idea that was merely verbally mentioned by someone else, especially if that person is working within the same company.

So far, past research has mainly focused on the effects of competitive work environment on the willingness of workers to share information with each other (e.g. Steinel et al. 2010 ;

Carpenter/Seki 2006 ; Burks et al. 2005 ; Drago/Garvey 1998). Actively taking credit for someone elseʼs ideas has rather been neglected. The only relevant study about taking credit for someone elseʼs idea at the workplace that could be identified in preparation of the present study was authored by OfficeTeam, a staffing specialist company (Krumrie 2010). This study included telephone interviews of 444 workers and found that 29 % had experienced a co- worker taking credit for one of their ideas. However, the survey didnʼt ask if any of the interviewed persons ever took credit for someone elseʼs idea and about their motivations to do so.

The present research seeks to fill this gap by pursuing two goals. The first goal is to show that situational influences can activate competitively or cooperatively processing mindsets that are strong enough to alter an individualʼs decision to take credit for a colleagueʼs idea regardless oneʼs personality or personal disposition. In particular, four aspects are examined: the willingness of an individual to take credit for someone elseʼs idea without or with escalating severity of anticipated consequences for not taking credit, the individualʼs ethical considerations about this action and the individualʼs perception of the mindsets of others. The situational influences in form of either a competitive or cooperative environment will be thereby artificially created by using subliminal priming techniques in an artificial laboratory experiment. The second goal is to develop a comprehensive basis for future research in the field of stealing ideas by asking questions about why it would be right or wrong to take credit for someone elseʼs ideas. This shall enhance our understanding of the underlying reasoning in the participantsʼ decision-making process.

2. Theory and Hypotheses

2.1 The role of subliminal priming

The method of subliminal priming was used in this study to artificially produce either a competitive or cooperative environment that affects the participantsʼ behaviour with situational cues. Subliminal in this context means – as opposed to supraliminal – that primes affect individuals below their threshold of cognitive awareness (Bargh/Pietromonaco 1982).

In the literature about social cognition primes represent subtle manipulations that activate certain mentally represented concepts via associative links (Bargh et al. 1996, Dijksterhuis et al. 1998). Research has shown that priming can alter a personʼs perceptions of others (e.g. Herr 1986), which then influence behavioural responses to or processing of a certain piece of information. In Herrʼs study (1986), participants were primed with the concept of hostility, which made them perceiving others more hostile towards them and therefore reduced the level of cooperation. Notably, these studies focused merely on the participantsʼ perceptions of other actors with a mediating effect on behavioural responses.

Other studies have shown that those activated concepts can directly trigger related behavioural responses, even if only weak cues were used to prime the participants in an experiment (e.g. Srull&Wyer 1979 ; Bargh et al. 2001 ; Maxwell et al. 1999 ; Good 1973). A study by Bargh et al. (1996) depicts the impact of such cues: merely exposing participants to an elderly stereotype induced them to walk down a hallway slower than those in the neutral control group did. In another study, Kay & Ross (2003) sought to show that situational constructs and norms have a mediating role on behaviour. They argued that such situational cues can greatly predict social behaviour. Their findings demonstrated that priming persons either exposed to competitive or cooperative cues had a significant effect on the personsʼ subsequent behavioural intentions. The present study seeks to build on these findings by showing that competitive and cooperative cues can also influence behavioural perceptions and intentions towards stealing someone elseʼs ideas.

It has to be noted that such manipulations are expected to function best in ambiguous or novel situations. Extending Fiske and Taylorʼs assumption that people try to minimize cognitive resources by established scripts about how to deal with familiar situations, Kay et al. (2004: 84) showed in a study about priming with physical objects that peopleʼs decisions and perceptions in ambiguous or unfamiliar situations tend to rely on external (environmental) cues. Consequently, participants in the present studyʼs experiment were confronted with a hypothetical situation that was kept as ambiguous as possible.

2.2 Willingness to take credit without and with escalating severity of consequences

In the literature about the dark side of the organisation – involving all intentional behaviour by an entity in an organization with negative consequences for another entity (Griffin/OʼLeary- Kelly 2004) – two perspectives are generally considered: the bad individual per se and the bad organisation with negative influence on the individual.

Evidence exists that there are certain personality traits, which can be responsible for dark side behaviour such as taking credit for someone elseʼs idea. Blickle and Schlegel (2006) found e.g. in their study among 150 managers and convicted 76 white-collar felons that certain traits are likely to be responsible for engaging in white-collar crime: higher levels of hedonism and narcissistic personality disorder and lower levels of behavioural self-control and conscientiousness indicated a higher likeliness to commit offences.

However, there is reason to assume that an individualʼs surroundings significantly affect his or her intentions and behaviour regardless the individualʼs personal disposition. There is e.g. empirical evidence that an individualʼs level of dark side behaviour is in fact influenced by the overall level of this behaviour in his or her work group. In a study by Robinson and OʼLeary- Kelly (1998) perceived antisocial group behaviour (such as stealing or saying something bad about a colleague) was positively related to each group memberʼs antisocial behaviour.

The mere working conditions also present a viable influence: Employees who perceive that their job demands exceed their coping resources (oneʼs own effort to succeed in oneʼs job) feel overwhelmed (Demerouti et al. 2001). Agnewʼs general strain theory (1992, in Langton/Piquero 2007: 2) assumes that the failure to achieve a goal or to meet job demands is likely to result in mental strain. Thus, employees will be urged to look for ways to regain control over the work environment. The decision or rather the justification which way is the right to choose is thereby also likely to be influenced by the employeesʼ environment itself. Social information processing theory (Salancik/Pfeffer 1978: 224) suggests that an individual develops attitudes and socially acceptable rationalisations based on the available social information. Next to the consequences of own past choices this information is provided by other employees and the organisation itself, i.e. the social environment of the individual. The following paragraphs consider two kind of environments and their expected effect on an individual under pressure, which is relevant for this study: a competitive and a cooperative environment.

Labour economists have addressed in the past how employees under pressure will behave in a competitive work environment (Lazear 1989, Lazear/Gibbs 2009, Chen 2003, Green/Stokey 1983). In a so-called “tournament” (Lazear/Gibbs 2009: 298) a firm rewards or promotes its employees for their performance. The competitive factor derives from a relative performance measurement rather than from an absolute standard: it does not primarily matter if an employee reaches a certain performance, but it does matter if he or she is doing better than her colleagues (Lazear/Gibbs 2009). This implies two principles. First, competition motivates employees to increase their effort in order to win (Lazear/Rosen 1981). Second, it can decrease cooperation among them and push them to engage in sabotaging their colleagues (Lazear 1989). Such “predatory behaviour” (Lazear 1989: 562) can include stealing information from them to make up for oneʼs – insufficient – effort. This paragraph explained how workers react in a environment with high pressure from competition. The next paragraph will go further into detail about why they react that way.

This does not necessarily imply the intention to harm the co-worker who is sabotaged, i.e. is ripped of his or her idea, but primary to secure oneʼs survival at the workplace (Rosenfeld et al. 1995). As found in a study by Harrell-Cook et al. (1999), this kind of behaviour serves as a coping mechanism for oneʼs own incompetence. Such a form of impression management is described by Bratton and Kacmar and involves next to blaming, discrediting, intimidation and negative projection also “taking credit for someone elseʼs work” (2004: 296). They further explain that this harmful form of impression management is triggered by contextual variables such as uncertainty that partially arises when oneʼs own competence doesnʼt seem enough to succeed (Bratton/Kacmar 2004).

In contrast to a competitive environment, a cooperative environment, in which individual performance evaluation is based on group performance or on absolute standards, has a rather opposite effect. A study, conducted by Carpenter and Seki (2006) in a Japanese fishing community shows that the nature of a respective work environment has distinct outcomes on an individualʼs attitude. Their findings are that the fishermen who are not organized in collaborative groups faced a highly competitive environment. They engaged in less cooperation than the fish traders and the administrative staff of the community, who faced a less competitive work environment. This study demonstrated how the work environment and job demands lead to different outcomes on individuals who even shared a common background after all: all workplaces were situated in the same community (Carpenter/Seki 2006).

Notably, the level of collaboration is positively related to the level of cohesiveness in a group of employees (Bakker et al. 2006; Sawng et al 2006). The level of group cohesiveness indicates the level of mutual trust and assurance that none of them will take advantage of the other members and also to what extent they comply to shared norms and goals (Lauring/Selmer 2010).

If faced by a heavy workload or similar threats, individuals in a competitive environment might therefore be less inclined to collaborate and instead engage in taking credit for a colleagueʼs idea. In contrast, individuals in a cooperative environment might be eager to uphold the level of collaboration and resist the urge to take credit. Based on these thoughts, it can be predicted that:

Hypothesis 1: When unable to cope with their job demands, individuals in the competitive priming condition are more willing and individuals in the cooperative priming condition are less willing to take credit for someone elseʼs idea than individuals in the neutral condition are.

Following the same rationale, it can also be assumed that the willingness to take credit for someone elseʼs idea is likely to increase if the anticipated consequences for not doing it cause increasing costs to the individual, like e.g. getting a worse performance appraisal or being dismissed. In a study about an individualʼs commitment to engaging in software piracy, i.e. stealing intellectual property, Glass and Wood (1996) found that the willingness to commit piracy is positively correlated with the likelihood of obtaining favourable outcomes in return. Despite the initially mentioned distinction between ideas and intellectual property, it seems reasonable to assume that the motivation to engage in such behaviour is similar in the case of stealing ideas: The negative consequences pose an additional source of strain to the employee that he or she will try to minimize in order to obtain a more favourable outcome:

Hypothesis 2: When unable to cope with their job demands, individuals in the competitive priming condition are more willing and individuals in the cooperative priming condition are less willing to take credit for someone elseʼs idea with escalating severity of anticipated consequences for not taking credit for the idea than individuals in the neutral condition.

2.3 Perceived ethical costs

The issue with claiming intellectual property rights for an idea was initially mentioned in the introduction. One could assume that taking credit for someone elseʼs idea is stealing and therefore violates legal or societal norms, i.e. causes ethical costs to the individual and society as a whole. Still, stealing always entails by definition a violation of another personʼs rights of ownership in a fundamental way (Green 2007). With ownership and ideas being not a clear-cut relationship, taking credit for someone elseʼs idea allows a lot of subjectivity in perceiving ethical costs associated with that action, especially if one takes into account the culturally and historically conditioned mental model of ethical behaviour of an individual (Chen/Choi 2005). Individuals might simply fail to recognize taking credit for someone elseʼs idea as a moral issue (Glass/Wood 1996). Indeed, studies have shown that ethical decision- making is a highly complex process that is subject to a variety of personal dispositions. Various studies show that ethical reasoning is influenced e.g. by age, work experience, gender and cultural heritage (Chiu/Spindel 2009).

However, other authors mention that the decision-making process is influenced by an individualʼs “contextual rationality” (Guy 1990: 34), i.e. the generation and selection of feasible alternatives is embedded in the context. In fact, Bekkers (2004) expects in a study about the stability of individual social value orientations, which also entail personal competitive and cooperative dispositions, that situational cues like primes have been responsible for the low stability of social value orientations in the studyʼs experiment.

Guy (1990) describes the ethical decision-making process in four stages. In the first stage, the problem and the desired outcomes in all relevant dimensions are determined. Stage two involves an evaluation which values might be affected in the process. In step three, an individual identifies all feasible alternatives considering all dimensions of the problem. Additionally, it is evaluated which values would be maximised or minimised by choosing a respective alternative. In the final step, the individual chooses the alternative, which maximises the value that is the most important to the individual and still solves the problem.

The whole process is highly subjective and the weighting to what extent which values are affected by an alternative depends largely on the individual.

Assuming that situational cues influence the individualʼs ethical decision-making, those who are exposed to competition primes might consider pro-social values (e.g. mutual trust in oneʼs team) as less important than pro-self values (e.g. success in oneʼs career) and vice versa for participants in a cooperative priming condition. For competitively primed individuals the decision to take credit for someone elseʼs idea would incur a minor, if any, norm violation, i.e. negligible ethical costs. As Sims (2003) notes that people who face competition may focus only on winning and accept behaving unethically as necessary mean toward oneʼs own end. Considering that individuals in a cooperative environment are likely to try to maintain a high level of collaboration – as mentioned above – taking credit for someone elseʼs idea would pose a severe norm violation. This would cause the individual to perceive higher ethical costs despite the inability to cope with oneʼs job demands.

Hypothesis 3: When unable to cope with their job demands, individuals in the competitive priming condition perceive less ethical costs and individuals in the cooperative priming condition perceive more ethical costs in taking credit for someone elseʼs idea than individuals in the neutral condition.

Due to the complexity of the ethical decision-making process, the present study also explores why an individual would think that taking credit for someone elseʼs idea is the right or not the right thing to do and also what that individual thinks what someone else in the same situation would consider as the right or wrong thing to do. Therefore, participants in the present study were asked four open-ended questions. These will be explained in more detail in the methodology section of this study.

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