![]() In fact, it’s highly likely that you will soon feel guilty about your bad behaviour. While it might feel sweet to get even with your employer who broke his/her promise to you, we know that the hedonic high of “getting even” is short-lived. Allow me to explain using the acronym BRAIN: Benefits, Risks, Alternatives, Information and Nothing.įirst of all, when you experience a broken promise, take a step back and think about the potential benefits of being vengeful in light of the risks associated with stealing from your employer. ![]() So when we add one and one together, we notice that the combination of “a desire to retaliate” and “enjoying enacting vengeful” leads to a positive reinforcement of this behaviour.Īs a consequence, employees are far more likely to be vengeful in the future when they are confronted with a broken promise because they mainly experienced positive consequences of their negative behaviour.ĭoes this mean that I am advocating for you to behave vengefully when your employer broke one or more promises to you? Of course not. Some studies have also demonstrated that some people seem to enjoy behaving vengefully, especially when they are in a higher status role and when they feel more dominant. Moreover, researchers found that this effect was most profound among those who were excellent at their jobs and expected to be treated fairly, meaning that an organisation’s best employees are most likely to be “vengeful” in the face of broken promises. If you wrong us, shall we not be vengeful?īecause these promises are such a central part of your employment agreement, you feel that when your employer breaks them, you can take what is “rightfully” yours.Įmployees who experience broken promises tend to experience a series of very intense negative emotions such as anger, frustration and outrage, which in turn will lead to a higher desire to dominate, retaliate and get even with the employer. It therefore seems that employers break promises rather frequently, but they do not seem to acknowledge their wrongdoing or intervene to offer a solution. When you start a new job, your employer tends to make a series of promises to you with regards to your employment that are not necessarily part of your written contract.Īt this point you are probably thinking: “So if they break their promises so often, they must at least apologise for them, right?” Sadly enough, a series of recent findings has indicated that employers hardly ever seem to notice that they did something wrong.Īs a consequence, they only try to justify or rectify their actions about 6% to 37% of the time. So if these behaviours are so harmful to our economy, why do we engage in them? The damage in economic terms caused by these “petty theft” behaviours have been valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, may be responsible for roughly 35% of an organisation’s inventory shrinkage annually, and an average of 1.4% of its total revenues. Other academic researchers have reported that up to 75% of employees admitted to stealing office supplies in the past year. In a recent anonymous survey by Papermate as part of the launch of a new pen, 100% of office workers admitted to have stolen a pen at work. Have you ever taken office supplies home? Stolen some pens and paper from your employer for your kids’ arts and crafts class? Used the office printer to print personal concert tickets? The author, Yannick Griep, is an assistant professor of industrial and organisational psychology at the University of Calgary in Canada. This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.
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