Do People at Work Have the Reputations They Deserve

Imagine being asked to interview an applicant for a customer service job who has a reputation for being uncooperative or "difficult." Or picture being asked to negotiate with a vendor with a reputation for being overly aggressive. Clearly, bad reputations can affect how we approach hiring and negotiation processes. And considering that reputations can shape how things happen in or ganizations, the question arises whether reputa tions tend to be accurate. For instance, are employees' reputations in the workplace related to their history of behavior? Moreover, how do their reputations develop? These are complex questions that psychologists have grappled with for decades. Fortunately, new research is shedding light on the link between be havior and reputation. Indeed, Cameron Anderson and Aiwa Shirako of the University of California at Berkeley conducted three studies that tracked the development of reputations. In the first study, Anderson and Shirako exam ined the reputations of 80 MBA students enrolled in negotiation courses. Weekly, these students participated in negotiation role-plays in which they were randomly assigned partners and roles. For example, in one session pairs of students were assigned the role of either an oil executive or a gas-station owner negotiating over the sale of a gas station. The researchers kept track of the results weekly and noted how well individuals secured resources for themselves?referred to as "distribu tive outcomes." They also assessed how well the negotiating partners' agreements satisfied the needs of both parties?referred to as "integrative outcomes." At the end of the negotiation course, Anderson and Shirako evaluated students' reputations for cooperativeness by asking them to nominate which of their colleagues were the most trustwor thy, gentle-hearted, and sympathetic negotiators. Each student's reputation for cooperativeness was determined by the number of times he or she was nominated. Overall, those who typically achieved integrative outcomes were more likely to be rated as cooperative. In other words, the students who attended to their negotiating partner's needs and generated mutually beneficial solutions were more likely to have reputations for being cooperative. Interestingly, the quality of distributive outcomes the negotiators achieved had no impact on their reputation. Anderson and Shirako concluded that a per son's history of behavior is somewhat related to his or her reputation, with some behaviors carrying more weight than others in shaping that reputa tion. That's because it's difficult to pay attention to every aspect of other people's behavior. Con sequently, we are selective about what informa tion we pay attention to and what we remember over time. Anderson and Shirako take this a step further and argue that we are not just selective in paying attention to certain behaviors. We are also selective about whose behaviors we notice and discuss. For example, in the first study, although behavior was related to reputation, not everyone who achieved integrative out comes was nominated as cooperative. Anderson and Shirako suggest that having behavior no ticed enough to become part of your reputation depends, at least in part, on how socially con nected you are to those doing the observing. In most organizations, certain individuals tend to be more visible and more socially connected than others. As a result, these people may be