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Essay on Self-Serving Bias
Self-serving bias in its literal sense would mean the tendency of any person to consider themselves responsible for success and claim to be not part of failures. It is mainly a "defensive attribution" or the inclination of a person to attribute successes to internal or personal factors but to attribute our failures to situational factors beyond control.
Self-serving behavior such as taking credit for success is commonplace within organizations is manifested in a variety of ways and is a regular part of organizational life. For example, Jackall (Jackall, 1998) in a field study on managerial work, notes that “authority provides a license to steal ideas … chairmen routinely appropriate the useful suggestions made by members of their committees research directors build their reputations for scientific wizardry on the bricks laid down by junior researchers.” Despite the frequency of this egotistical behavior, little organizational research has investigated its implications for organizations.
People tend to rate their performance better then average because they want to protect their egos, they want to feel that they are meeting their goals. Given the frequency of self-serving behavior within organizations, justice concerns arising from such actions are likely be a significant source of negative employee conduct......
