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12 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine From Volkswagen on emissions tests to Wells Fargo on opening extra accounts, the tales of workers who cheat continu- ally grab media attention. But Marie Mitchell and her co-authors found a simple reason for such employee mal- feasance: When people think they have to meet high benchmarks to keep a job, some fudge results. In "Cheating Under Pressure: A Self- Protection Model of Workplace Cheat- ing Behavior," Mitchell, an associate professor of management at the Univer- sity of Georgia, reported that cheating is especially prevalent if workers think they cannot meet expectations any other way. This perception leads to anger and unethical behavior, which causes em- ployees to focus on doing what helps them even if it harms others. "There's a cycle in which nothing is ever good enough today," Mitchell said. "Even if you set records last month, you may get told to break them again this month. People get angry about that, and their self-protective reflex is elicited al- most subconsciously." For example, Wells Fargo told em- ployees their goals included opening sky-high numbers of new accounts. Thousands opened fraudulent accounts to meet their quotas, which resulted in a $185 million fine in 2016 and public scorn. Most research on cheating has taken place in behavioral labs, which doesn't always translate well to the workplace. To examine actual workplaces, Mitch- ell's research team devised three studies. The first created a measure of workplace cheating behavior through a nationwide survey that asked participants about cheating behavior at work – what it is and if they had seen it. The second and third studies were time-separated field surveys that asked employees about their performance pressure at one point in time and then about their feelings and perceptions of the pressure and their cheating behaviors about a month later. Mitchell said managers should un- derstand the potential threat of perfor- mance pressure to employees. If they coach workers on how to view pressure as nonthreatening and focus on how to enhance performance ethically, cheating may be prevented. "It could be that if you pair perfor- mance pressure with ethical standards and give employees the right kind of assurance within the workplace, it can actually motivate great performance," she said. "There have been many schol- ars who have argued that you need to stretch your employees because it moti- vates them, makes them step outside of their normal boxes and be more creative. Our research says that it could, but it also might cause them to act unethically." The paper was published in the Jour al of Applied Psychology and co-authored by Michael D. Baer of Arizona State Uni- versity, Maureen L. Ambrose and Rob- ert Folger of the University of Central Florida and Noel F. Palmer of the Uni- versity of Nebraska-Kearney. News from the field The front line Don't squeeze your workers into cheating UGA study finds high-pressure expectations lead to unethical behavior Marie Mitchell and her colleagues have shown that high-pressure expectations can push your employees toward unethical behavior.