Abstract
Lies cost money and careers, destroy trust, and at times may increase perceptions of power. According to a 2016 study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the “typical organization loses 5% of annual revenues to fraud” (ACFE, 2016, p. 4). In the cases of Enron and the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, thousands of people lost their jobs and/or their life savings. The major impacts of corporate deception, however, may begin in the little lies told between subordinate–superior and co-worker dyads. In a self-report study, 45% of employees from multiple organizations stated that they have lied to someone in their organization, yet few of these lies were ever caught (Lindsey, Dunbar, & Russell, 2011). This chapter, then, is an effort to examine the research in organizational deception from two levels—the organizational/corporate or macro-level and the interpersonal/interactional or micro-level. Corporate-level deception is explored through strategic ambiguity (Eisenberg, 1984), fraud, deception in advertising, and suggestions for reducing deception at the corporate level. Research from the interpersonal level of organizations is discussed with a focus on how and why organizational members lie, followed by suggestions on reducing lies in organizational interpersonal relationships and recommendations for future research.
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Hubbell, A.P. (2019). Organizational Deception: Lies at Work. In: Docan-Morgan, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96334-1_33
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