Up Close and Friendly: A Study of Compassion and Favoritism by Human Resource Professionals
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Authors
De Mello e Souza, Carlos Alberto
e Souza Wildermuth, Cristina de Mello
Issue Date
2019-04
Type
Article
Language
en_US
Keywords
Human Resource Management , Business and Society
Alternative Title
Abstract
We assess differences in human resource professionals’ displays of compassion and
favoritism by observing the rigor with which participants in an experiment enforce an
organizational rule. In our experiment, participants must decide to report (be rigorous) or
not report (be lenient) a rule violation committed by an employee. Participants are
randomly assigned to three scenarios varying in affective and psychological closeness:
the employee violating the rule is a co-worker, a co-worker experiencing serious difficulties
at home, or a close friend experiencing the same difficulties. We observe that staff and
senior human resource managers act with compassion towards co-workers facing severe
difficulties at home. We also observe that human resource professionals (with the
exception of senior managers) tend to be more lenient towards their friends. Our model
suggests that moral reasoning is a fundamental driver of compassion when participants
have information about extenuating circumstances. However, moral reasoning seems to
be inhibited in the presence of friendship, so that favoritism, when it exists, is produced
entirely by the direct effect of adding friendship to the decision context.
Description
20 pages
Citation
Publisher
Drake Management Review