Recent years have seen a pronounced desire for there to be alignment between the values of employees and the values of their employer.  Ordinarily this is touted as a means of improving employee engagement while also ensuring that employers behave in a societally beneficial way.

New research from the University of Kansas reminds us, however, that such alignment may not always be so benign.  The study reveals that some employees are so keen to show their loyalty to their organization that they will lie about them on review sites like Glassdoor.

Excess commitment

The researchers focused their attention on the commitment people feel with their organization, and the ethical behaviors this includes.  They were especially interested to learn the lengths we will go for organizations we’re highly committed towards, including lying and other unethical behaviors.

“This paper shows that people are willing to lie on behalf of their company in online reviews if they are highly identified, but that commitment to the long-term values and goals of the company may reduce that willingness to deceive in the reviews,” the researchers explain.

There is a significant growth in workplace-review sites, but the distribution of reviews is far from even.  The paper highlights the J-shaped distribution that commonly emerges with extreme viewpoints of the organization tended to dominate, with either really happy or really unhappy reviews.

Identification and commitment

The researchers wanted to gauge the difference between identification and commitment to the employer of around 300 employees.  What’s the difference between the two?

“We have identification with the company, which is a sense of oneness or belonging,” the researchers explain. “When you talk about your workplace, do you say ‘we,” or do you say ‘they’? That subtle shift in language is one way that that identification manifests.

“The other way we measured it was commitment. So the questions included “How long would you like to stay at your job?” “How attached are you to your job?”

“Those two are really similar concepts, but they are meaningfully different, and we found that affects how people rate their company in online reviews.”

Reliable testimony

The researchers wanted to explore how these might influence the reviews we leave of our employer online.  They argue that if you see your work as a fundamental part of who you are, you’re more likely to post a positive review, even if it’s not true.  That is indeed what transpired in the data.

“The more identified you were, the higher your review was. And then the way we teased out unethical behaviors was … we asked people questions like “If it would help your organization, would you exaggerate the truth to customers?” and “Would you conceal information from the public that could be damaging to your organization?”, the researchers explain.

The data revealed that some people were indeed willing to lie on behalf of their employer, and the researchers believe that this unethical behavior is bad for organizations, even as it appears to be done for their benefit.  It’s due to a phenomenon known as the “sinking ship problem”.

The sinking ship

“If you look in the organization-science literature, it’s universally good; we want people to be identified,” the researchers explain. “We want them to care about their work, to internalize what they’re doing. But it’s also bad, because if the organization is going down and you just keep bailing water instead of abandoning ship, you will drown. So commitment captures that. It’s a long-term focus on you and the organization succeeding. So we might say that if people at Enron had really been committed to Enron’s success, they wouldn’t have deceived the public the way they did in the first place. They would recognize that the lie has a long-term corrosive effect.”

This has profound implications, both for organizations and for the workplace-review websites.  It should encourage them to try and prime workers to provide more realistic reviews, perhaps by highlighting how other people will use them to make decisions regarding that firm.

For managers, the researchers remind them of the weight of evidence showing that the ethical behavior of a company has a big impact in the long-term success of the business.

“So organizations should focus on healthy attachment—balancing identity with commitment: We’re strong because of what we do at work and in our community, and what’s best for the company is not necessarily the easy decision,” they conclude.