Research shows that when there is no risk of a lie being discovered,
people will tell the truth only 39 per cent of the time. PHOTO | FILE
By SCOTT BELLOWS
In Summary
Humans crave fairness. We desire our actions to speak
for themselves without any bias. If our own individual innovation at
our workplace results in a significant improvement at our firm, then we
expect to gain recognition from it and share in the profit.
We loathe when others misrepresent our work or profit from us without partaking.
Further, nothing reflects employee angst more in an organisation than the ubiquitous annual performance review.
Despite Business Talk discussing the negative
effects and demotivation of evaluations on 12 July 2013 along with other
research in many publications, the practice still flourishes throughout
Kenyan firms.
Notwithstanding the anxiety that slows down work
and the unconscious bias of supervisors, research conducted by Julie
Rosaza and Marie Claire Villeval at the University of Montpellier and
the University of Lyon in France show yet another startling trend during
performance reviews.
Managers actually lie. Supervisors do not just
record little simple fictitious statements that slightly exaggerate or
understate an employee’s performance.
Managers out and out lie with stunning depth and
frequency. The researchers found that bosses lie more than 33 per cent
of the time on employee performance reviews.
Research conducted by Sip, Roepstorff, McGregor,
and Frith shows that honesty exists as a fundamental underpinning of
human behaviour and society. However, lying behaviour often presents a
challenge to catch.
Employees widely suspect their management of lying
in a multitude of situations. Audit firm Ernst & Young published a
European Fraud Survey in 2009 that found that 40 per cent of staff
across many companies thought that their executives lacked integrity to
the extent that in tough times, the management would cut corners, with
30 per cent of respondents strongly agreeing.
However, if researchers ask employees directly
whether they themselves exhibit dishonest behaviour, vast majorities of
respondents across studies show self-bias by stating they do not lie or
cut corners.
Since self reporting on honesty does not work,
social scientists must dig deeper. Research that Urs Fischbacher and
Franziska Heusi undertook delineated that when no risk of anyone
discovering a lie exists, people will tell the truth only 39 per cent of
the time and 22 per cent will state utter complete total lies.
Interestingly, the remaining 39 per cent comprises incomplete lies whereby people change only some of the details.
So we could classify people’s honesty into three
categories: authentic truth, twisted truth, or dark evil lies. Multiple
other researchers in the past five years delve into understanding human
truthfulness behaviour in the workplace.
Annual performance
The research puts perspective on what employees
often feel when receiving their evaluations. When one out of three
statements on reviews represents a manager lie, the falsehoods by
managers actually mimic those in the general population falling between
twisted truth and dark evil lies.
If your company insists on performance reviews, then
employees should also evaluate their bosses, otherwise improprieties,
lies, and bias becomes hard to uncover.
Share your stories of managerial lies with other Business Daily readers through #KenyaCheaters on Twitter.
Prof Scott serves as the Director of the New
Economy Venture Accelerator (NEVA) and Chair of the Faculty Senate at
USIU, www.ScottProfessor.com, and may be reached on:
info@scottprofessor.com or follow on Twitter: @ScottProfessor
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