A New Approach to the Study of Deception in Organizations

The goal of the present study was to provide a comprehensive approach to the study of organizational deception. Logic based on McCornack's (1992) Information Manipulation Theory (IMT) was applied to measuring and theorizing about organizational deception, and a new approach for researching deception in organizational contexts was validated. Results show that deceptive messages similar to IMT's dimensions were plausible in the organizational context and they represented the dimensions they were created to reflect. The scandal involving the Enron Corporation and the Martha Stewart insider trading scandal have brought issues of organizational deception back to the forefront of dialogue in the United States. Although a body of insightful social science literature exists on this topic, three perspectives have emerged that operate independently. Often one perspective is taken without acknowledgement of other views, ignoring vast amounts of research. In 1992, McCornack encountered a similar challenge in the interpersonal deception research and developed Information Manipulation Theory (IMT) to deal with this challenge. Likewise, IMT guides the present research in its goal to organize the existing literature on organizational deception. Three perspectives have emerged in the study of organizational deception: information distortion (e.g., Athanassiades, 1973, 1974; Fulk & Mani, 1986; Gaines, 1980; Mellinger, 1956; Read, 1962; Zand, 1972), strategic ambiguity (e.g., Eisenberg, 1984; Eisenberg & Goodall, 1993; Paul & Strbiak, 1997), and lies (e.g., Argyris, 1953; Breed, 1955; Grover, 1993; Johnson, Grazioli, & Jamal, 1993). These perspectives operate exclusively, yet are similar as each perspective regards deception as an intentional upward distortion of information in messages (e.g., Athanassiades, 1973, 1974; Gaines, 1980; Grover, 1993; Mellinger, 1956; O'Reilly & Roberts, 1974; Roberts & O'Reilly, 1974a, 1974b; Zand, 1972). IMT provides guidance here because it integrates deceptive message typologies found in interpersonal communication (e.g., Buller, 1986; Hopper & Bell, 1984; Metts & Chronis, 1986) through its use of Grice's (1989) conversational maxims. IMT posits that messages are deceptive when they violate Grice's maxims regarding conversational expectations of quantity, quality, relevance, and manner of information communicated in a message. For Grice's quantity maxim the right amount of relevant information must be provided. In organizational deception research violations of this maxim are referred to as withholding messages, as they contain some truthful information, but lack critical information (Fulk & Mani, 1986; Roberts & O'Reilly, 1974a). The second maxim, quality, posits that the right information must be conveyed and violations involve significantly changing message content (McCornack, 1992). In the organizational context these violations are called distortions as they are considered "totally false, pure fabrication" (Grover, 1993, p. 490). The third maxim, manner, argues that one should clearly present information. Eisenberg's (1984) description of strategic ambiguity is an example of organizational deception violating this maxim, as these messages are vague and/or convey multiple meanings. The fourth maxim, relevance, dictates that only situationally relevant information should be communicated. Changing the subject is a violation of this maxim and although it has not yet been examined in organizational setting, it has been found in interpersonal deception research (e.g., McCornack et al., 1992) and therefore may be present in organizational deception. Analogous to the framework provided by IMT, these seemingly different messages come together to form an understanding of how people in organizations deceive, and by demonstrating that the messages are valid we take one step toward bringing together the three disparate research perspectives. Hypotheses To determine if this new conceptualization of organizational deception is valid, the messages designed to represent these forms must represent what they were intended to represent. …