Stealing ideas at the workplace: The effects of situational cues on the willingness to steal ideas at the workplace, related ethical considerations and the perception of others¿ mindsets

Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Psychology - Work, Business, Organisational and Economic Psychology, grade: 1,0, London School of Economics (The London School of Economics & Political Science), course: Organisationspsychologie, language: English, abstract: This study aims to show that situational cues like semantic primes are able to influence a participant¿s decision-making in the context of taking credit for someone else¿s idea at the workplace. In a laboratory experiment either a competitive, cooperative or neutral environment was simulated by using subliminal priming techniques. Participants were then exposed to a hypothetical scenario in which they were urged ¿ due to their heavy workload ¿ to take credit for a colleague¿s idea. In particular, the study examined four constructs: the participants¿ willingness to take credit for this idea without and with escalating consequences for not choosing to do it, the perceived ethical costs related to that action and the perception of others mindsets. It was expected that participants in the competitive condition would be more willing to take credit for the colleague¿s idea and perceive less ethical costs than in the neutral condition and vice versa for the participants in the cooperative condition. Additionally, the study expected the participants to perceive the mindset of a random other in the same situation to be similar to their own mindset. Furthermore, qualitative data was collected to explore the decision-making process in such a situation. The results showed that situational cues did not significantly influence the individual decision-making in this particular context. However, several unexpected findings about the relationships between the tested constructs deliver valuable implications for future research on the topic of taking credit for other people¿s ideas. In addition, the findings from the qualitative analysis suggest that future studies have to differentiate between ethical and utilitarian considerations to gain further insights into the individual decision-making process.