Question

According to Pfeffer and Fong (2005), a person can build influence through self enhancement. Many psychological factors are strong attributes to social influence such as increase of commitment to purpose, similarity attraction/in group favoritism, hierarchy of sets and subsets that exist in management and leadership, and power originates from self-enhancement. Although the referenced factors are necessary to build influence, they can also diminish power. I want to focus on two factors for this discussion question, hierarchy and power. We have seen a recent decrease in hierarchy structures within organizations. Companies are leaning on the wealth of knowledge verses position thus diminishing diminishing the hierarchy status, titles and positions (Pfeffer & Fong 2005). Secondly, in obtaining positions and power some individuals tend to overestimate their contribution to the whole. This leading in a self-serving bias affects the efficacy of intervening in situations during challenging times and leads to overvaluing one's contributions to organizational success (Pfeffer & Fong 2005).

What can be done or seen different in this scenario?

Answer 1

The emergence and transformation into lean organizations is a current trend that cannot be changed or modified. But what could be done differently in such scenario is to avoid the emergence and cultivation of self-serving bias.

Following are some measures that an organization or even an employee can take in order to alleviate self-serving bias:

1. Increasing awareness regarding self-serving bias at the workplace: An organization’s HR department can take this initiative forward by themselves or encourage employee to read about self-serving bias online.
2. Failures to be accepted and celebrated: Be it the organization or any employee, failure needs to be accepted as a stepping stone towards learning and success. In this manner, we start taking accountability for the failures rather than blaming the credit if failures on others.

Making efforts to give credit to others: Every employee should consider the organization as a family and try to have a positive image of the employees around him/her. The organization should develop and encourage a team-based culture and give credits for every success to the whole team and not a particular individual. This will help inculcate the habit of not overvaluing one’s contribution to organizational successes.