The bright side of entitlement: exploring the positive effects of psychological entitlement on job involvement
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EBHRM-05-2021-0097 |
| Published date | 13 May 2022 |
| Date | 13 May 2022 |
| Pages | 19-34 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
| Author | Szu-Yin Lin,Hsien-Chun Chen,I-Heng Chen |
The bright side of entitlement:
exploring the positive effects of
psychological entitlement on
job involvement
Szu-Yin Lin
Department of Business Administration, College of Management,
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Hsien-Chun Chen
Department of Business Administration, College of Management,
National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung, Taiwan, and
I-Heng Chen
Institute of Human Resource Management, College of Management,
National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose –Although the sense of entitlement was traditionally associated with a range of maladaptive
personality characteristics, the purpose of the current study is to take an initial step to explore a positive
implication of psychological entitlement.
Design/methodology/approach –The target population for this study comprises employees from various
industries in Taiwan. To examine the research hypotheses, structural equation modeling techniques were
employed to perform a mediation analysis and conditional process analysis.
Findings –The results of this research showed that career ambition mediates the relationship between
psychological entitlement and job involvement, where psychological entitlement is positively related to career
ambition, and career ambition is positively related to job involvement. Nonetheless, the authors’data did not support
the proposed moderation effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between career ambition and job involvement.
Originality/value –This work is among the first to investigate how an employee’s psychological entitlement
is associated with his/her job involvement and the boundary conditions that affect this relationship.
Keywords Psychological entitlement, Career ambition, Self-efficacy, Job involvement
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The sense of “entitlement”has received increasing concern in various fields over the past
years (Fisk, 2010). For instance, researchers performed a Lexis/Nexis search for the term
“sense of entitlement”and found that it has increased almost six folds over the past
decade, in 1998 there were 148 instances, and about 400 instances in 2003, until 2007, the
number has increased up to 996 (Lessard et al., 2011;Harvey and Martinko, 2009;Campbell
et al., 2004).
Psychologicalentitlementcan be defined as the“pervasive sense that one deservesmore and
is entitled to more thanothers”(Campbell et al.,2004, p. 31). Educators observed that students
nowadays are more prone to academic entitlement, often expecting high grades without
reciprocal performance (Achacoso, 2002), which leads to disruptive and uncivil student
behaviors (Koppand Finney, 2013;Chowning and Campbell, 20 09).Psychological entitlement
has also been associatedwith a number of maladaptive personality characteristics, including
greed, aggression,and lack of forgiveness (Reidyet al., 2008;Campbell et al., 2004),narcissism,
lack of self-control(Raskin and Terry, 1988), Machiavellianism (McHoskey, 1995).
Psychological
entitlement’s
positive effects
19
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2049-3983.htm
Received 15 May 2021
Revised 26 November 2021
Accepted 26 April 2022
Evidence-based HRM: a Global
Forum for Empirical Scholarship
Vol. 11 No. 1, 2023
pp. 19-34
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2049-3983
DOI10.1108/EBHRM-05-2021-0097
Within the organizational setting, employees’sense of entitlement may influence their
work attitudes and behaviors. It can be explained through psychological contract (Gresse
et al., 2013;Naumann et al., 2002;Robinson and Rousseau, 1994). Psychological contract is a
cognitive schema, or system of beliefs, representing an individual’s perceptions of his or her
own and another’s obligations (Rousseau et al., 2018). Rousseau (2001) suggests that
psychological contracts between the employees and the organization are formed during the
recruitment and socialization processes, and employees are driven by a perceived exchange
agreement between themselves and their employer (Priesemuth and Taylor, 2016;Rousseau,
1989), each party to the psychological contract interprets their own terms of that contract and
tends to maintain this exchange relationship based on reciprocity.
The increased focus on psychological entitlement may be a product of shifting cultural
norms, attributed to the behaviors of generation Y (roughly born between 1980 and 2000)
(Alexander and Sysko, 2011;Fisk, 2010;Harvey and Martinko, 2009). As the new generation
is joining and gradually dominating the workforce, their entitled attitude may impact their
work and affect organizational performance. Further, previous corporate scandals have led to
growing attention on psychological entitlement (Levine, 2005). Despite gaining academic
interest, scholars still urged to explore the attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of entitled
individuals in the workplace (Fisk, 2010;Naumann et al., 2002;Major, 1994). In particular,
although psychological entitlement is predominately regarded as a negative construct, as
management literature generally assumed that organizations would want to reduce the level
of employees’entitlement perceptions, researchers suggest that the negative association may
misrepresent the construct (Fisk, 2010;Naumann et al., 2002). Thus, a primary aim of this
research is to explore whether psychological entitlement can serve as a positive motivator in
the workplace, the underlying mechanisms in this process, and the boundary conditions that
may moderate these effects.
Literature review
Psychological entitlement in the workplace
Following previous research, the current study conceptualizes the sense of entitlement, that is,
psychological entitlement as a personality construct, in which individuals consistently believe
that they deserve preferential rewards and treatment, often with little consideration of actual
qualities or performance levels (Harvey and Martinko, 2009;Naumann et al., 2002;Snowet al.,
2001). Entitled individuals believe that they should be treated as special or unique in social
settings, they have a consistently positive view of themselves and generally expect important
events to "go their way" (Snow et al., 2001), and deserve special privileges over othersand special
exemptions from normal social demands without reciprocating (Raskin and Terry, 1988;
Emmons, 1984) regardlessof whether they exploit others to achievetheir ends.
In organizations, employee perceptions of entitlement can be defined as the compensation
expected from the employment relationship (Naumann et al., 2002). Entitled individuals are
reported to react negatively to criticism (e.g. Campbell et al., 2004;Harvey and Harris, 2010);
leads to poor working relationships and job dissatisfaction (Campbell et al., 2004;Naumann
et al., 2002); workplace frustration (Harvey and Harris, 2010); and it is positively associated
with turnover intention, low job satisfaction (Harvey and Martinko, 2009). Research on both
unethical leadership (Levine, 2005) and narcissistic leadership (Rosenthal and Pittinsky,
2006) indicated that high levels of entitlement lead to corruption and overly self-centered
behavior. In order to maintain positive self-views in the face of contradictory evidence, people
often distort their perceptions of reality in such a way that a desirable self-image can be
maintained (Martinko and Gardner, 1987;Zuckerman, 1979).
Past research has linked psychological entitlement with a higher tendency to attribute
negativeworkplaceoutcomes to externalfactors(Harv eyet al .,2008); research that examines the
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