Stealing ideas at the workplace (PDF)

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.