Claiming more than equality: Should leaders ask for forgiveness?

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t In organizations, leaders are often paid more than lower-level employees. Social dilemma research also shows that leaders feel entitled to earn more, and because of this, are more inclined to contribute less than an equal share to a public good, which may damage the collective. In two experiments, the social dilemma context is used to examine how group members react when either a leader or a follower violates the equality norm. Moreover, we demonstrate how asking for forgiveness sometimes mitigates people's reactions to equality norm violations. Results show that asking for forgiveness attenuates negative emotions, retribution, and non-cooperation—but more so if followers, relative to leaders, violated equality. In fact, leaders are less likely to be seen as even violating norms, suggesting that group members perceive leaders to be entitled. A fact of organizational life is that leaders receive more pay and benefits than do lower echelon employees. Typically, CEO's earn more pay than most, if not all, other employees in their organizations; upper management earns more than lower management; and lower management earns more than entry-level employees (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003; Rees, 1993). Not only do leaders earn more, but they feel entitled to take more. High-paid leaders may develop a taste for perquisites, perhaps especially those leaders who ascend quickly in organizations, who, as Kramer (2003) argues, may develop a " winner wants all " mentality. Such leaders often feel that rules do not apply to them and that they deserve the trappings of power (Kramer, 2003). For example, consider the famous rise and fall of Lew Glucksman at Lehman Brothers in 1983 (Auletta, 1986). Once Glucksman assumed the sole CEO position, he immediately grabbed resources for himself and his cronies, even though the resource-grab harmed the firm. Moreover, it doesn't take much leading for a " leader " to feel entitled. Keltner et al. (2003) propose that power is associated with increased rewards and freedoms because powerful people become disinhibited. To illustrate, they describe an experiment in which groups of three people were asked to complete a boring task of filling out surveys for a half-hour. In each group, one person was selected randomly to be " in charge. " Next, a plate of five cookies was put out. Typically, the " leader " was the one who …