title: Entitlement in the workplace: An examination of the behaviours employees use to express their entitlement beliefs
Creators: name: Langerud, Dan Henning B
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: entitlement beliefs
subject: workplace
subject: Employee entitlement

description: Employee entitlement reflects a situational contingent belief among employees that they are owed preferential treatment or rewards from their organisation, and is seeing an increasing interest among both academics and among practitioners (Jordan et al., 2017). Employee entitlement is characterised by entitled employees having an excessive self-regard, enhanced self-view and expectations of rewards as an automatic right, believing their claims to be reasonable as they see their input as more valuable than that of referent peers (Westerlaken et al., 2017). Entitled employees are described in media to be intolerant of critical feedback, to expect positive feedback on mediocre performance, and to have unrealistic rewards-expectations (Harvey &amp; Dasborough, 2015). Research on entitlement beliefs primarily finds it to be linked to detrimental outcomes, such as dissatisfaction (Laird et al., 2015), cyberloafing (Rahaei &amp; Salehzadeh, 2020), conflict with co-workers and supervisors (Harvey, Harris, et al., 2014; Harvey &amp; Martinko, 2009; Wheeler et al., 2013), eroded social cohesion within the organisational environment (Harvey &amp; Dasborough, 2015; Whitman et al., 2013), worse individual performance (Hackney et al., 2018; Joplin et al., 2021) and organisational performance (Alnaimi &amp; Rjoub, 2019). My program of research seeks to further investigate the impact of employee entitlement beliefs in the workplace by focusing on examining the behaviours employees use to express their entitlement beliefs, an area of research that has not previously seen any attention. I have developed four research questions to answer my aim: Research question 1: What types of behaviour do employees engage in to advance their perceived entitlement beliefs? Research question 2: What is the relationship between entitlement beliefs and expressed entitlement behaviours among perceived entitled employees? Research question 3: What are the emotional experiences of entitled employees as they work to express their entitlement through specific behaviours? Research question 4: What is the relationship between expressed entitlement behaviours and employee outcomes? Drawing on my literature review on employee entitlement in the workplace (chapter 2), I develop a conceptual model proposing that emotion regulation motives (instrumental or hedonic) influence how employees with unmet entitlement beliefs seek to advance their claims (chapter 3). The focus of chapter 3 is to examine how entitled employees pursue their entitlement beliefs and what are the implications if these beliefs are met or unmet? Specifically, I focus on how unmet entitlement claims invoke emotional reactions among employees and how these are related to different emotion regulation motives (based on performance) and consequent job satisfaction. Based on equity theory, I argued that employees continually assess their personal outcomes for fairness and that these equity perceptions potentially are affected by entitlement beliefs. Study 1 (chapter 4) reports on a qualitative study examining supervisors’ observations of entitled employees behaviour which they see as attempts by employees to express their entitlement beliefs. I conduct semi-structured interviews with 21 experienced supervisors from a wide range of industries and age cohorts, and asked them three questions based on the construct definition of each of the three factors (excessive self-regard, enhanced self-focus, rewards as a right) that comprised employee entitlement (Westerlaken et al., 2017) and an additional question that focuses on how the supervisors manage these behaviours. I employ a thematical analysis of the dataset, and found four emerging themes, namely: impression management behaviour, sensitivity to punishment, rewards-oriented behaviour, and job crafting. In relation to my overall program of research, in chapter 4, I specifically focus on research question 1: What types of behaviour do employees engage in to advance their perceived entitlement beliefs? and research question 2: What is the relationship between entitlement beliefs and expressed entitlement behaviours among perceived entitled employees?. Based on the findings in my literature review, the conceptual model linking entitlement beliefs to emotion regulation motives, and the thematical themes emerging from study 1, in study 2, my aim was to examine quantitatively the behaviours that contribute to expressed entitlement and their relationship to a range of outcome variables. I also examine the impact of emotion constructs on these relationships. As no measure of expressed entitlement behaviours has been developed, in this study, I justify the use of four proxy measures (based on my findings from Study 1) to assess expressed entitlement, namely impression management, sensitivity to punishment, sensitivity to rewards, and job crafting. I then examine how these proxies mediate the relationship between employee entitlement beliefs and three outcome variables: employees turnover intentions, work engagement and job satisfaction. I also explore the moderating role of emotion regulation motives between employee entitlement beliefs and expressed entitlement. In this study, I use a panel survey design, drawing on paid participants to test these relationships. I gathered a sample of 320 full-time employees based in the U.S. to empirically test the hypotheses. In relation to my overall program of research, in this chapter, I specifically focus on research question 3: What are the emotional experiences of entitled employees as they work to express their entitlement through specific behaviours? and research question 4: What is the relationship between expressed entitlement behaviours and employee outcomes?. In chapter 6 I summarise my program of research by outlining the overall results and draw out three emerging themes: employee engage in specific behaviours to advance their entitlement beliefs, emotions are important in seeking to advance entitlement claims, and specific ways of expressing entitlement lead to specific outcomes. Finally, I note theoretical and practical contributions, as well as, discuss the strengths, limitations, and the future directions for practice and theory. Overall, my program of research has contributed to an expanded theoretical understanding of entitlement beliefs in the workplace and the central role that emotions play in the process of employees seeking to pursue those entitlement beliefs. My research has also conceptually provided a new framework for examining the behaviours that employees use to advance their entitlement beliefs. Practically this provides managers with a better understanding of the phenomenon of entitlement in the workplace and contributes to potential ways in which entitlement beliefs can be managed.