New articles in OBHDP (March 6, 2024)

When loyalty binds: Examining the effectiveness of group versus personal loyalty calls on followers’ compliance with leaders’ unethical requests

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597824000025

John Angus D. Hildreth

Employees’ loyalty to their leaders and organizations is generally considered beneficial, as this sense of allegiance can lead to higher levels of performance and commitment. Questioning this consensus, this paper explores a potential downside of loyalty—whether loyalty might lead employees to comply with leaders’ morally questionable requests. Through a series of six experiments, this paper shows that leaders’ “loyalty calls”—an influence tactic that appeals to employee’s allegiance—increased employees’ rationalization of their unethical behavior, contributing to higher compliance with unethical requests. These studies demonstrated that employees were more likely to comply when leaders appealed to employees’ loyalty to the group, as opposed to their personal loyalty to the leader. Whereas loyalty is often praised as an essential value, this research highlights that leaders may also leverage employees’ allegiance to encourage unethical behavior in pursuit of goals.

But what if I lose the offer? Negotiators’ inflated perception of their likelihood of jeopardizing a deal

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597824000116

Einav Hart, Julia B. Bear, Zhiying (Bella) Ren

Research has consistently shown that job candidates benefit from negotiating their job offers. And yet, people often hesitate to negotiate, partially due to fears that initiating a negotiation might lead the company to rescind the offer. After all, for many employees a sub-optimal job offer is better than no job offer. This paper explores whether job candidates’ concerns about jeopardizing a deal by negotiating are overblown. Across seven studies, the authors found that job candidates consistently overestimated hiring managers’ unfavorable responses to negotiation attempts. These inflated perceptions of the likelihood that the offer would be withdrawn led job candidates to avoid negotiating. This research provides employees’ with a clearer understanding of the risks involved in negotiating their job offers. By revealing that job candidates’ risk perceptions tend to exceed the actual risk, this research suggests employees would be wise to negotiate for improved economic outcomes.

p.s. if you can’t access the full-text let us (m-kouchaki@kellogg.northwestern.edu or mikebaer@asu.edu) know and we’d be happy to share a copy.