The case explores Dell s reasons for pursuing a buyout and those of major shareholder Southeastern Asset Management for challenging the proposal. —Sean Silverthorne PUBLICATIONS SEPTEMBER ORGANIZATION SCIENCE Social Comparisons and Deception Across Workplace Hierarchies Field and Experimental Evidence pdf By Edelman Benjamin and Ian Larkin ABSTRACT—We examine how unfavorable social comparisons differentially spur employees of varying hierarchical levels to engage in deception.
Drawing on literatures in social psychology and workplace self esteem we theorize that negative comparisons with peers could cause either junior or senior employees to seek to improve reported relative performance measures via deception. In a first study we use deceptive self downloads on SSRN the leading working paper repository in the social sciences to Chinese Overseas America Number Data show that employees higher in a hierarchy are more likely to engage in deception particularly when the employee has enjoyed a high level of past success. In a second study we confirm this finding in two scenario based experiments. Our results suggest that longer tenured and more successful employees face a greater loss of self esteem from negative social comparisons and are more likely to engage in deception in response to reported performance that is lower than that of peers.
Publisher s link hbs faculty Publication Files SSRN Org Sci Rewrite for ssrn b b c f f be f e fe ea pdf SEPTEMBER JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES Management Practices Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors pdf By Helper Susan and Rebecca Henderson ABSTRACT—General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world but between and its share of the U.S. market fell from . to . and in the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional explanation for this decline namely high legacy labor and health care costs is seriously incomplete and that reasons that many of the other highly successful American firms of the s s and s were forced from the market including a failure to understand the nature of the competition they faced and an inability to respond effectively once they did.