Kirk Chang, Sylvain Max and Jérémy Celse
Employee’s lying behavior has become ubiquitous at work, and managers are keen to know what can be done to curb such behavior. Managers often apply anti-lying strategies in their…
Abstract
Purpose
Employee’s lying behavior has become ubiquitous at work, and managers are keen to know what can be done to curb such behavior. Managers often apply anti-lying strategies in their management and, in particular, the role of self-awareness on lying intervention has drawn academic attention recently. Drawing on multi-disciplinary literature, this study aims to investigate the efficacy of self-awareness in reducing lying behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
Following the perspectives of positivism and deductive reasoning, a quasi-experimental research approach was adopted. Employees from Dijon, France were recruited as research participants. Based on the literature, different conditions (scenario manipulation) were designed and implemented in the laboratory, in which participants were exposed to pre-set lying opportunities and their responses were analyzed accordingly.
Findings
Unlike prior studies which praised the merits of self-awareness, the authors found that self-awareness did not decrease lying behavior, not encouraging the confession of lying either. Employees actually lied more when they believed other employees were lying.
Practical implications
This study suggests managers not to rely on employee’s self-awareness; rather, the concept of self-awareness should be incorporated into the work ethics, and managers should schedule regular workshops to keep employees informed of the importance of ethics. When employees are regularly reminded of the ethics and appreciate its importance, their intention of lying is more likely to decrease.
Originality/value
To the best of the atuhors’ knowledge, the current research is the first in its kind to investigate lying intervention of employees in the laboratory setting. Research findings have brought new insights into the lying intervention literature, which has important implication on the implementation of anti-lying strategies.
Details
Keywords
Jérémy Celse, Kirk Chang, Sylvain Max and Sarah Quinton
The purpose of this paper is to analyse employees’ lying behaviour and its findings have important implication for the management and prevention strategies of lying in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse employees’ lying behaviour and its findings have important implication for the management and prevention strategies of lying in the workplace. Employee lying has caused both reputational and financial damage to employers, organisations and public authorities. This study adopts a psycho-cognitive perspective to examine the mechanism of lying reduction and the influence envy has on lying behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
Incorporating social comparison phenomenon and cognate studies this study suggests that envy may restrain people from lying in the workplace. Specific hypotheses are developed and tested with 271 participants using dice game scenarios.
Findings
Research findings have found that people are likely to lie if lying brings them benefits. However, the findings also reveal that the envy aroused between two people may act as a psychological barrier to reduce the tendency to lie.
Originality/value
The research findings have provided an alternative perspective to the current prevailing view of envy as a negative emotion. Envy need not always be negative. Envy can provide an internal drive for people to work harder and enhance themselves but it can also act as a brake mechanism and self-regulator to reduce lying, and thereby has a potentially positive value.