“Productivity goes up.” However, “one of the side effects that disturbed some is that it does mean that peers start to discipline one another, and one way to do that is by tattling.” “I think the general sense is that it’s a good thing for workers to feel empowered,” says Bidwell. “He said that while his old supervisor might tolerate someone coming in a few minutes late, for example, his team had adopted a ‘no tolerance’ policy on tardiness and that members monitored their own behaviors carefully.”Ī report found that the youngest workers were substantially more likely to report misconduct they observed than older workers. “With his voice concealed by work noise, told me that he felt more closely watched now than when he worked under the company’s old bureaucratic system,” wrote Barker in “Tightening the Iron Cage: Concertive Control in Self-Managing Teams,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly. “Now, the whole team is around me and the whole team is observing what I’m doing,” an employee at a small manufacturing company told Barker. Barker, a professor at Dalhousie University in Canada, those working for a team of peers reported sensing a collective impulse for tighter self-regulation than when they had worked for a single boss. Bidwell’s theory about why it might be more prevalent now: paradoxically, the emergence of self-managing teams. Some human resources and management leaders think tattling is on the rise. Says Monica McGrath, vice dean for Wharton’s Aresty Institute of Executive Education: “While there is a risk in telling, there is also a risk in not telling.” But for more routine matters, the rules of the game are less clear, leaving the potential tattler with a no-win dilemma. Whistleblowing and reporting activities that are out and out illegal or clearly unethical demand action. Once you get down to cases where you think something is clearly unethical and wrong and needs to be stopped, when there is the potential for real harm to be done to somebody - economic harm as well, or damage to a customer relationship - then I think the ethics there become important.” “There are questions of what’s your business and what’s your responsibility. “My gut instinct isn’t to get involved, but I am not sure that’s the right tone,” says Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell. But is tattling inevitably destructive? There are instances in which reporting what’s going on is the better choice - indeed, the necessary one - so can certain practices and policies make tattling a useful tool? Deciding whether to tattle isn’t as simple as it sounds. The office snitch is a reliable recurring character in many workplaces, a petty villain who foments gossip and undermines teamwork and morale. How to Use Neuroscience to Build Team Chemistry January 23, 2023Įvery office or shop floor has at least one - the worker watching from the corner of his or her eye, taking mental notes and reporting back to the boss.Crisis Leadership: Harness the Experience of Others February 14, 2023.Choosing a New Board Leader: Eight Questions March 7, 2023.Speak With Confidence: Four Fixes That Work April 11, 2023.Meet the Authors: Wharton’s Katy Milkman on How to Change May 14, 2021.Meet the Authors: Mauro Guillén on How Businesses Succeed in a Global Marketplace June 21, 2021.Meet the Authors: Wharton’s Peter Cappelli on The Future of the Office November 4, 2021.Meet the Authors: Erika James and Lynn Perry Wooten on The Prepared Leader October 3, 2022.Navigating Microaggressions at Work November 1, 2022.How National Politics Are Impacting DEI in the Workplace February 7, 2023.
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