Entitlement-minded workers likelier to accuse bosses of mistreatment

Workers, who have a sense of unjustified entitlement, are more likely to claim that their bosses are abusive toward them, a new study has revealed.

The research was conducted by Paul Harvey, associate professor of organizational behavior at UNH, and his research colleagues Kenneth Harris from Indiana University Southeast, William Gillis from the University of South Alabama, and Mark Martinko from the University of Queensland.

The researchers also found that when they compared the responses of employees supervised by the same manager, entitled employees were more likely to report higher levels of abuse from their managers, even when their less-entitled co-workers did not.

Harvey and his co-authors conducted two surveys for this research. The first queried 396 full-time employees about workplace abuse who, on average, had been with their company for seven years.

The second survey asked the same questions as the first survey, but included additional questions for a co-worker of each respondent. The second survey resulted in data on 81 pairs of employees and co-workers who had the same supervisor and who worked together for an average of about 21 hours a week.

Inaccurate perceptions of supervisory abuse fueled by a sense of entitlement by employees can be a significant problem for managers, Harvey explains.