Arizona State University Research Team on 'Loyalty and Exploitation' Relationship
"Higher Loyalty Linked to Greater Exploitation Tendencies"... A Vicious Cycle Pattern
A study has attracted attention by revealing that employees who are loyal to their company tend to do more unpaid work.
Recently, a study titled "Loyal Employees Are Targets of Exploitation" was published in the international academic journal Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, drawing significant interest. The research was conducted by Matthew Stanley and Professor Chris Neck from the Department of Business Administration at the University of Arizona, USA.
When the company is in urgent need... loyal employees are assigned more tasks
The research team conducted an experiment with about 1,400 participants to understand the relationship between "loyalty" and "exploitation" within companies. Each participant was assigned the role of an executive at Company A and was tasked with managing a fictional employee named "John."
The financial condition of Company A was not favorable. Participants were given a scenario where they had to squeeze employees with a limited budget and assign unpaid work. The condition was that John had to work unpaid late into the evening for several days or perform tasks unrelated to his job.
The participants were divided into two groups and given different hints about John. One group was told that "John is a loyal employee to the company," emphasizing his loyalty, while the other group was only told that "John is an honest employee who performs his work fairly."
As a result, participants assigned more unpaid overtime to the "loyal employee." This showed a tendency for so-called "passion pay" to be concentrated on employees with high loyalty.
Diligent employee → passion pay → "Very loyal"... the vicious cycle of loyalty and exploitation
Notable results also appeared in the opposite situation. Participants evaluated employees who accepted unpaid work as having high loyalty to the company.
In other words, loyal employees are assigned unpaid work, then those employees are evaluated as more loyal, which leads to even more unpaid work. This forms a vicious cycle of loyalty and exploitation.
Professor Stanley, who led the research team, stated, "Loyal employees tend to be exploited, and when they do such work, their reputation as loyal employees increases, making it more likely they will be selected for (exploitative) work in the future."
Regarding this, the analysis suggested that "this is because there is a belief that if someone is loyal, they will endure personal sacrifices for the company."
However, Professor Stanley added, "I do not want to suggest to people, based on this research, that they should 'be loyal to no one.' We value loyal people. This is a really delicate and complex issue."
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