Why do employees cheat? Too much pressure

Study finds high-pressure expectations lead to unethical behavior

It can happen in the branch office or the boardroom. Volkswagen did it to pass emissions tests. Wells-Fargo did it to squeeze more profits from their customers. Some school districts have it done it to boost their standardized test scores. Workplace cheating is a real and troublesome phenomenon, and new research from the University of Georgia explains how it starts -- and how employers can help prevent it. "It's the desire for self-protection that primarily causes employees to cheat," said Marie Mitchell, an associate professor of management in UGA's Terry College of Business. "Employees want to look valuable and productive, especially if they think their job is at risk." In a recently published paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Mitchell and her co-authors examined performance pressure in the workplace and the behaviors that result from it. They found when employees feel their job depends on meeting high benchmarks, some fudge results in order to stay employed.

For example, when Wells Fargo employees were told to meet new goals that included opening sky-high numbers of new accounts, thousands began to open fraudulent accounts in order to meet their quotas. Wells Fargo was fined $185 million in 2016 and publicly scorned as a result. Similar scenarios can play out across all industries, Mitchell said. "We've seen it in finance, we've seen it with educators and test scores, we've seen it in sports, it's everywhere," she said. "Performance pressure elicits cheating when employees feel threatened. Even though there is the potential of getting a good payoff if they heighten their performance, there's also significant awareness that if they don't, their job is going to be at risk." This is especially true when employees feel they cannot meet expectations any other way. That perception leads to anger, which in turn leads to unethical behavior, Mitchell said. This crucible of pressure and anger causes employees to focus on doing what is beneficial to them -- even if it harms others. Read more...

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