By Nathaniel Luce
Professor Ray Friedman teaching an Executive MBA class in 2016. Credit: Vanderbilt University
Taiwan’s fast food industry was in a crisis during the summer of 2009. The media reported that several chains, including McDonald’s and KFC, were reusing old frying oil, which is potentially carcinogenic. The scandal rocked the industry. Debates raged about whether or not reusing frying oil was in fact dangerous, but the accusation had been made and the damage had been done.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University surveyed the fast food workers while the crisis was unfolding and found that the workers who felt shame distanced themselves from their organizations. Workers who heavily tied their personal identity to their job felt the strongest sense of shame, a finding that is contrary to previous thinking that strong identification with a company is always beneficial.
“When an organization is caught doing something really bad, people who are most identified with the organization seem to be most severely shamed and therefore the more likely to not want to be seen as part of that organization,” said Ray Friedman, the Brownlee O. Currey Professor of Management at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management. “That was a real surprise, because identification normally leads to helpful responses.”
The study is the first to empirically capture the dynamics of this kind of shame during a real, ongoing organizational or industry crisis. The study was published in the October 2015 issue of the journal Motivation and Emotion.
People feel shame when they feel bad about other people seeing them in a negative light. That’s different from guilt, which is what people feel when they feel bad about how they’ve affected others. Previous research suggests that people tend to respond to shame by withdrawal, and they tend to respond to guilt by trying to solve the problem.
“The classic response to shame is to not look at the actual problem,” Friedman said. “So if you’re feeling a sense of shame, then what you’re trying to do is repair people’s image of you, not the problem.”
Friedman’s study examined whether this thinking applies to how workers respond to a crisis in an organization that they are affiliated with. Do they try to help solve the problem, or do they run away from it?
The study was performed in Taiwan using surveys of 203 non-managerial fast food workers during the summer of 2009. Respondents were not asked to identify their company, but the survey area included more than 30 different stores, including local and international brands.
The study found that employees who had a higher sense of shame were significantly more likely to want to leave the company than those employees with a low sense of shame.
Some workers will tie their personal identity to their company. This is called organizational identity. These employees see their company as an extension of their own identity; part of who they are. This usually leads to positive things for the company—employees work harder and are concerned with the company’s well wellbeing. But Friedman’s study found that when the Taiwanese fast food industry brought shame to employees with high organizational identity, their feelings of shame—and ensuing withdrawal—were even stronger.
Taiwan is a shame-oriented culture. However, Friedman still expects the findings to apply to non-shame oriented cultures, such as the United States, but the baseline level of the shame response might be lower.
The study could help inform corporate leadership about which employees they might lose during an embarrassing crisis. “If you’re aware of who is most strongly identified with your company, then if you’re going through a time of embarrassing PR, those are the folks you need to pay most attention to,” Friedman said. “Don’t assume that they’re going to just hang in there for you. You’re most at risk of losing them, rather than having them be the ones who come back and get you out of the ditch.”
Citation: Chi, S. C. S., Friedman, R.A., Lo, H. H. “Vicarious shame and psychological distancing following organizational misbehavior,” Motivation and Emotion (October 2015). DOI: 10.1007/s11031-015-9483-0
Contact Person: Brett Israel Director, Business News & Communications Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management
Contact Phone: (615) 322-NEWS
Contact Email: brett.israel@owen.vanderbilt.edu
