They are often found to be associated with favoritism through resource distribution, promotion, and other benefits at work. Organizational politics are behaviors that are strategically designed to maximize one’s self-interest through an intentional social influence process 8. The study found several organizational environment factors to be potential predictors of supervisors’ favoritism behaviors, such that employees who reported higher levels of perceived workplace favoritism also reported higher levels of perceived organizational politics and higher levels of role ambiguity. The Environmental and Human Factors of Workplace Favoritism 7 Subordinates who perceived higher degrees of favoritism also reported having poor work relationships with the leaders receiving less recognition and professional help, such as mentoring and coaching, from the supervisor receiving less support at work, and having less trust toward the supervisor. Employees not only deemed favoritism as a form a workplace injustice/unfairness, but also reacted to favoritism behaviors with negative emotions toward the organization, less loyalty to the company, less job satisfaction, stronger intentions to quit the job, less work motivation, and more emotional exhaustion. The consequences of favoritism were numerous. Such behaviors include: praise, support, and socialization with certain employees more providing better opportunities, more desired tasks, and more frequent and timely feedback to certain employees considering suggestions of only certain employees giving important work-related information to certain people excusing certain employees for unproductive behaviors cutting more “slack” for some but not others (e.g., excusing their unproductive behavior, letting them get away with actions that other employees would be reprimanded for), etc. Participants were also asked to report the frequency of which their supervisor had engaged in favoritism behaviors - a list of behaviors that were developed by subject matter experts at Central Michigan University. Moreover, 21 percent of the respondents admitted that their supervisor treated them better than their peers at work. Beehr of Central Michigan University 5, 47 percent of American employees reported that their supervisor had favorites. In my study conducted with my advisor, Dr. Subordinates may feel their leaders are exhibiting favoritism because “my supervisor hangs out with Sam more often,” or “my boss constantly praises Kevin and nobody else.” But some other leaders may be seen as playing favorites simply because they have more in common with some employees than they do with the others, or they simply like some employees more than others. This type of favoritism is typically deemed unethical, even illegal in extreme cases. Some leaders practice favoritism to strategically maximize their self-interest - they adopt favoritism to seek their personal interests or the interests of a friend, a family member 3 - or they use favoritism as a tool to manipulate and control situations by deliberately favoring some employees instead of others to gain loyalty and centralize power 4. Leaders play favorites at work for various reasons. The Detrimental Effects of Workplace Favoritism Below, I discuss how such biased treatment impacts those who are not favored, some causes of workplace favoritism, and, perhaps more interestingly, what happens when you are the favorite. Merit Systems Protection Board 2 survey results indicated that 25 percent of American federal employees believe their supervisor practices favoritism, over 50 percent suspected that other supervisors in their organization practice favoritism, and 30 percent of human resources management staff agreed that favoritism occurs in the organizations in which they serve. ![]() ![]() executives 1, found that more than half (56 percent) of executives admitted to having a favorite candidate when making internal promotion decisions, and 96 percent of them will promote their favorites rather than considering the candidates’ communication abilities, which is crucial for the position examined in the study. There is some evidence that many leaders have favorite(s) - and, more importantly, treat favored employee(s) differently. But that episode always left me wondering if favoritism wildly exists in workplaces today and how it will impact the employees. In this case, Rachel is a victim of workplace favoritism, and she takes a comical approach to ingratiate herself with her boss.īut comedy is just comedy after the humor, no solutions to the problem, nor the effects of such phenomena were further discussed at the end of the show. In the once-popular NBC prime-time sitcom Friends, there is an episode where Rachel decides to take up smoking in an attempt to make inroads with her boss, because her colleague who takes smoke breaks gets more opportunities to talk with her boss, which ultimately leads to her suggestions being accepted over Rachel’s.
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