Pressuring employees to engage in good corporate behaviour can make them feel entitled and engage in more deviance, writes Kai Chi (Sam) Ya

Yam, Kai Chi (Sam)

LSE Research Online

4/4/2017How (not) to turn good soldiers into bad applesblogs.lse.ac.uk /businessreview/2017/04/04/how-not-to-turn-good-soldiers-into-bad-apples/Citizenship or prosocial behaviours at work are important. These behaviours are not formally rewarded by financialincentives and yet serve critical functions. A workplace with high levels of citizenship and prosocial behaviours leadsemployees to be more productive, engaged, satisfied, experience less stress, and reduce turnover. As a result,many managers and organisations tend to encourage their employees to be more prosocial and engage in morecitizenship behaviours in the forms of helping co-workers in difficult times, promoting the company’s image to thepublic outside of work, and engaging in corporate volunteering programs.While scholars have shown that citizenship behaviours have numerous benefits to the organisation, in arecent paper my colleagues and I explored the dark side of them. In three different studies with more than 1000employees, we found a paradoxical effect of engaging in prosocial behaviours at work. Those who were initiallymost prosocial and engaged in the most citizenship behaviours were also among the most deviant at a later time;they were more likely to curse at someone at work, act rudely, lie, or steal from the organisation. Importantly, wefound this effect to be consistent among all types of employees in terms of gender, tenure, age, and even across twovery distinct cultures (China and the United States).Why this paradoxical effect?Our research draws upon a theory called “moral licensing”. In a nutshell, moral licensing theory suggests that weview our sense of morality akin to a bank account. When we engage in prosocial behaviour, we “debit” our moralbank account. In contrast, we “credit” our moral bank account when we engage in deviance. Most of the time wewant to maintain an equilibrium in which our moral bank account is close to zero. When we have accumulatedenough moral credits, however, we tend to spend it. In other words, the prosocial acts that employees initiallyengage in help build up credits that can later license us to engage in deviance.We also found that the key mechanism to moral licensing is an inflated sense of psychological entitlement. Whenemployees engage in financially unrewarded prosocial behaviours, they build up a sense of entitlement, a belief thatthe organisation owes them something in return. We found that it is this sense of entitlement, as a result of prior1/3engagement of prosocial acts in organisation, which ultimately licenses future deviance. To give another example,consider how people generally feel after an intense workout. They tend to feel good about themselves and believethat they are entitled to something, and most people tend to overeat after sweating off hundreds of calories becausethe intense and difficult workout provides a license to engage in the exact opposite (and often more rewarding)behaviour subsequently.In all three studies, however, we also observe an important distinction between being a good citizen at workbecause you intrinsically want to versus being a good citizen at work because you feel pressured to do so. Foremployees who are intrinsically motivated to engage in prosocial behaviours, they did not exhibit an inflated sense ofentitlement and did not engage in as much deviance compared to employees who were extrinsically motivated (e.g.,“encouraged” by one’s supervisors) to engage in prosocial behaviours.So what should managers do to encourage prosocial behaviours at work without promoting deviance at the sametime?Our research suggests a few way in which managers can enjoy the benefits of increased prosociality at workwithout simultaneously promoting deviance at a later time.1. Reassess motivational tactics: Managers should customise their motivational tactics for each employee toensure tapping into their intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, motivation.2. Create informal, non-financial rewards for prosocial behaviour: Managers should learn to rely more heavily oninformal rewards such as positive feedbacks and public praises to curtail the feelings of entitlement. Forexample, research suggests that people are much more motivated to engage in future prosocial behaviourswhen they can observe the prosocial impact of their work on others (e.g., finding out how staying at work lateto cover for a sick co-worker helps alleviate stress and leads to better recovery of that co-worker).3. Establish a prosocial culture: Managers should establish a prosocial culture in which more people arevolunteering than not. That way, prosociality and volunteerism are no longer the exception but rather thenorm. Doing so can reduce the salience of both entitlement and moral licensing.♣♣♣Notes:This blog post is based on the author’s paper From Good Soldiers to Psychologically Entitled: ExaminingWhen and Why Citizenship Behavior Leads to Deviance, co-authored with Anthony C. Klotz, Wei He andScott J. Reynolds, in Academy of Management Journal, February 1, 2017 vol. 60 no. 1 373-396The post gives the views of its authors, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School ofEconomics.Featured image credit: Rotten to the core, by Pete, Public domainBefore commenting, please read our Comment PolicyKai Chi (Sam) Yam  is an assistant professor of management at the National University ofSingapore Business School. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He teachesand conducts research on business ethics and leadership. His research has been published bynumerous top tier academic journals and covered by multiple media outlets. In 2016 he wasnamed by Poets and Quants as one of the Best 40 under 40 Business Professors in the world.Email: bizykc@nus.edu.sg 2/3Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics3/3

How (not) to turn good soldiers into bad apples

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