• Medientyp: E-Artikel
  • Titel: Social Comparisons and Deception Across Workplace Hierarchies: Field and Experimental Evidence
  • Beteiligte: Edelman, Benjamin; Larkin, Ian
  • Erschienen: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), 2015
  • Erschienen in: Organization Science, 26 (2015) 1, Seite 78-98
  • Sprache: Englisch
  • DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2014.0938
  • ISSN: 1047-7039; 1526-5455
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  • Beschreibung: We examine how unfavorable social comparisons differentially spur employees of varying hierarchical levels to engage in deception. Drawing on literatures in social psychology and workplace self-esteem, we theorize that negative comparisons cause senior employees to seek to improve reported relative performance measures via deception. In a first study, we use deceptive self-downloads on the Social Science Research Network, the leading working paper repository in the social sciences, to show that employees higher in a hierarchy are more likely to engage in deception, particularly when the employee has enjoyed a high level of past success. In a second study, we confirm this finding in two scenario-based experiments. Our results suggest that longer-tenured and more successful employees face a greater loss of self-esteem from negative social comparisons, and they are more likely engage in deception in response to reported performance that is lower than that of peers.