BazermanMoore

Bounded Ethicality 125
(Epley, Caruso, & Bazerman, 2006). One possible drawback of strategic partnerships is
that parties are often skeptical of the other side doing its share. It is widely known that
joint venture partners often contribute mediocre talent to the enterprise, rather than
their firms’ best talent. Why? Part of the reason is that each party has an incentive to
save its best talent for projects that the firm is fully invested in, rather than contribute
it to projects of which it owns only half. When we factor in the tendency of each side to
overclaim credit for its own contribution, it becomes apparent that each side will feel
entitled to reduce its contribution. Consequently, each side will view the other side’s
behavior as unfair and its own behavior as justified; the escalation of sinister attributions
about the other party spirals upward.
Can anything be done to stop individuals and organizations from overclaiming
credit? Caruso, Epley, and Bazerman (2007) asked Harvard MBA students to estimate
how much of the work done in their study groups they personally had completed.
When they added up members’ claims by group, the average total was 139 percent. In
other words, the members of the average group believed that they were responsible for
139 percent of the 100 percent of work completed. However, when the researchers first
asked group members to think about the contribution of each member, including themselves,
the average total of the claimed work done by the group fell to 121 percent.
While ‘‘unpacking’’ individuals’ contributions to the group effort did not cause the overclaiming
of credit to disappear, it did at least reduce the magnitude of the bias. Furthermore,
in a study of academic authorship of articles that had between three and six
authors, the same researchers found that overclaiming was rampant and that unpacking
reduced overclaiming. In addition, the greater the magnitude of overclaiming, the less
parties wanted to work together in the future.
Essentially, improving the perspective-taking skills of group members can help reduce
overclaiming and raise group performance. In addition, overclaiming may have
important implications for the longevity of groups. The next time a colleague makes a
claim that you view to be outrageous, before arguing, consider that you yourself might
also be guilty of the tendency to overclaim credit. In addition, remember that it is far
more likely that your colleague is biased rather than dishonest.
In-Group Favoritism
Think about some of the favors you’ve been asked to perform in recent years, whether
for a friend, a relative, a friend of a friend, or a friend of a relative. Have you helped
someone get concert tickets, an apartment rental, admission to a school, or a job?
Most of us are glad to help out with such favors. More often than not, we have done
them for people like ourselves—people who went to the same college, people we
work with, or people who happen to be of the same race. A basic psychological finding
is that we tend to identify with people who are a lot like us. In addition, we are more
comfortable doing favors for those with whom we identify than for those noticeably
different from us. Thus, we tilt toward helping people who share our nationality, religion,
race, gender, or alma mater. This all sounds rather innocent. What’s wrong with
asking your neighbor, the admission’s officer at the nearby college, to check up on a
coworker’s son’s college application? Isn’t it just ‘‘networking’’ to recommend a