Workplace Dumping Is Commonplace, So What's The Best Way To Deal With It?

Under the performance appraisal system, which has strengthened accountability as its core feature, it is not uncommon for higher-level managers to shirk their responsibilities and let their subordinates bear the consequences of their mistakes. This "dumping" behavior, not only distort the factual information, resulting in the organization missed the opportunity to learn from the error, does not help to solve the problem; will also exacerbate the subordinate's sense of unfairness and self-esteem frustration, breaking its rising wings; more importantly, it produces a contagious effect of the upward and downward effects, will intensify the organization's internal atmosphere of shirking responsibility, the formation of No responsibility can be responsible, no one is responsible for the pathological situation.

1,In the workplace, there is often a situation in which the superior managers shirk their responsibilities, and this kind of dumping behavior will not only lead to the organization's missed learning opportunities, but also affect the subordinates' sense of fairness and self-esteem.

2,The dumping behavior will intensify the atmosphere of responsibility shirking within the organization, forming a pathological situation in which no responsibility can be taken.

3,The motivational mechanism of managers' downward dumping includes several aspects, including initiation, attribution, dumping, and backing.

4,The poor performance of subordinates often becomes a breakthrough for managers to dump the blame, and they will rationalize the poor performance by distorting the problem-solving orientation.

5,At the same time, organizations should have robust accountability for performance appraisals and create a blame-free culture where employees feel safe and have the courage to express their true thoughts.

In the 2018 Boeing 737 Max airplane crash that shocked the world, company executives blamed some field engineers and technicians, saying they failed to properly install the MCAS system, which led to two fatal accidents. However, the investigation revealed that Boeing executives were guilty of serious failures in the design and development of the organization, failing to adequately test the system and failing to disclose relevant information to regulators and customers. Boeing was ultimately forced to admit its mistakes and accept hefty fines and restitution.

In the Facebook data breach incident, the company's CEO blamed his subordinates, saying they did not discover and report the matter in time; the head of Three Squirrels in 2021 said that one of its product categories was detected to be non-compliant with the standard because "the subordinates misunderstood the storage standard"; a store of Yonghui Supermarket in Beijing was exposed to be selling expired goods, and the person in charge claimed that the store employees did not comply with the standards. The person in charge claimed that the store staff did not follow the requirements of the inspection procedures ...... in the "accountability" as the characteristics of the performance evaluation system, the higher managers to shirk their responsibilities to let the subordinates bear the consequences of the error behavior is not uncommon, people jokingly referred to this behavior as the "dumping". "Shake off the pot".

Shake off the pot to shake out not only the responsibility, or insight into the world of human affairs, but also employees "eat pot", to some extent, affecting the employee's salary, bonuses, promotions, etc., and ultimately determine whether the problem can be solved. Therefore, how to recognize and respond to the performance evaluation of the pot behavior is critical.

I,What is dumping

As a buzzword first appeared in online games, the "pot" reflects the wisdom of Eastern culture, because it is not only a tool for eating, but also a metaphor for a heavy responsibility. Similar to the wisdom of the East, people in Western culture also use the metaphor to express their dissatisfaction with "shirking responsibility", i.e. "Pass the buck".

Pass the buck was introduced into the academic world as an English expression for "dumping the buck". On the one hand, pass the buck emphasizes leaving decision-making to others, as defined by Shirley Summers of the University of Washington: Passing the buck is giving up the freedom of choice in order to avoid taking responsibility for outcomes. On the other hand, dumping emphasizes the transfer of negative consequences resulting from errors to others, defined by Donna Hill of Bradley University as the process of transferring responsibility for a bad behavior or outcome from oneself to another person. In practice, the most common form of dumping takes the form of supervisors dumping their own faults on subordinates, i.e., downward dumping.

In the face of errors, people do not show as much tolerance for Blamelessness - the idea that you don't have to take responsibility for a mistake, but rather that you should take active steps to solve the problem - and that you should not be held responsible for it. There is not as much tolerance for blamelessness - the idea that mistakes should be resolved without taking responsibility for them - as there should be. Especially in the rigid performance evaluation system, out of fear of "accountability", managers have an incentive to shift the blame to subordinates. Dumping is characterized by subjectivity, hierarchy, and susceptibility to contamination.

Subjectivity: Duke University scholar Robert Ackerman (Robert Ackerman) pointed out that each of us has a "subjective filter" (Subjective filter) to attribute responsibility. People tend to reject the objective truth that is unfavorable to them, and at the subjective level, they take various ways to falsify information, weave various excuses, distort and deny the truth, set aside the relationship between themselves and their responsibilities, and build a logically self-consistent "umbrella" of defense for themselves.

Hierarchy: University of California scholar Yin found that high-powered people are more likely to believe that mistakes are the result of the wrongdoer's own problems, while low-powered people have more empathy and sympathy for the wrongdoer, and the intensity of blame is relatively weak. In other words, people in positions of power are more likely to believe that others could have made better choices, and thus are more likely to blame others for failures and thus engage in downward dumping.

Susceptibility: Research by Nathanael Fast, a scholar at the University of Southern California, and Larissa Tiedens, a scholar at Stanford University, suggests that when a person shrugs off blame to protect his or her self-image, it increases the propensity of others to engage in downward flinging and to follow suit. In contrast, identifying the problem and solving it is far more difficult than shirking responsibility by saying, "Whose responsibility is it?

Second, the negative impact of managers downstream dumping

First of all, dumping will reduce the enthusiasm of subordinates. This is not their own responsibility but had to "take the blame" for the superiors, in the short term, will intensify the sense of unfairness and shame; in the long term, will lead to employee alienation and slack work, breaking its upward progress ladder.

Secondly, dumping the pot will lead to the organization to miss the opportunity to learn from the error. According to the theory of perceptual control, mistakes are the driving force for individual progress. Individuals, especially managers, blame others for their mistakes, which does not help to correctly guide and promote cognitive system reorganization in the wrong state.

Third, dumping can hinder the improvement of performance appraisal system. According to James March and Herbert Simon's classic theory of corporate behavior, the most important purpose of performance appraisal is to make each employee responsible for his or her own performance and become a problem solver. Dumping is contrary to problem solving and hinders problem solving from the source, making it impossible for the organization to identify problems in a timely manner and achieve self-improvement in problem solving during performance appraisal.

Fourth, pot-shifting exacerbates the climate of blame-shifting within the organization. When employees see others take the blame, choose to stand by and protect themselves, will not only let the destructive force of the problem spread, but also lead to team member tension, weakening team cohesion, so that the organization is caught up in the "dumping", "backing", "mending", "mending", "mending", "mending", "mending", "mending", "mending" and "mending". "Mending the pot" of the vicious circle.

Third, the power mechanism of downstream dumping

To eradicate the harm to employees and organizational performance enhancement of the "tumor", the most important thing is to reveal the power mechanism of the managers downstream dumping. Theoretically speaking, dumping is by the start, attribution, the subject (leadership), the object (employees), the situation, means and results of several parts of the coupling together.


1,Initiation
In the performance appraisal process, poor performers are often not treated well by their leaders and coworkers. In particular, managers who fail to meet the goals set by the organization and have performance gaps will not only suffer from higher management's questioning of their leadership, but also suffer from the contempt of their subordinates, and may even be coveted by those who want to replace them due to performance accountability. In the face of such an embarrassing situation of substandard performance, managers' immunity to threats is activated and they are forced to engage in self-attribution of poor performance.

2,Attribution
The root causes of poor performance can be uncovered in three ways: internal or external? Is the will controllable or uncontrollable? Changeable or unchangeable? Based on the combination of the three, poor performance can be categorized into five types (see Figure 1).

"Blameless faults" refer to poor performance caused by external factors that are difficult to control and change, such as a sudden natural disaster that prevents performance goals from being met. "Unintentional fault" refers to faults caused by external factors that are controllable but difficult to change, which is similar to doing bad things with good intentions. Both of these attributions suggest that although the fault lies in the leader's office, neither is related to his or her joint and several liability. Theoretically, this is most likely to stimulate the leader's guilt. Under the influence of guilt, he is most likely to adopt the problem-solving approach advocated by James March and Herbert Simon.

The term "culpable fault" refers to the fact that although the error was caused by external factors, these factors are controllable and can be changed. For example, the head of Kashi Yogurt claimed that the 60-fold excess of yeast was caused by a change in ambient temperature, but this error could have been avoided by upgrading the product packaging and improving the transportation of the product.

"Intentional error" refers to a controllable and changeable error caused by internal factors. For example, the United States, a French fries manufacturing plant employees are dissatisfied with the strict performance of the superior punishment system, will be complaining about the words in the form of a note into the French fries packaging. "Negligence" refers to controllable but unchangeable faults caused by internal factors, such as the leakage of business secrets to the enterprise due to the inability to withdraw an e-mail sent by mistake for its own reasons.

All three attributions objectively require the leader to bear the responsibility for the error, and under the accountability system of "accountability", threat perception will inevitably be activated. When threat immunity is not enough to counteract the fear of accountability, the leader's guilt is replaced by cognitive dissonance.

3,Dumping
For leaders, the most desired outcome is to exert influence, lead a group of followers to overcome obstacles and achieve good results, and earn legitimacy for their leadership status. However, failure to achieve the desired performance goals results in a serious deviation from expectations and reality, which can trigger cognitive dissonance.

In a self-esteem orientation, cognitive dissonance may stimulate self-serving bias in leaders, who are more likely to dump unwanted results on subordinates to avoid being labeled as a loser and to protect their self-esteem from harm.

Cognitive dissonance also activates the Advantage blindness effect in power-oriented managers: emphasizing employee agency on the one hand, and ignoring employee misery on the other. This is exactly what Michael Sandel decries in The Arrogance of the Elites, which characterizes meritocrats. In the face of poor performance, the meritocracy lack of empathy, more likely to ignore their own due to the leadership responsibility, mercilessly for the subordinates (especially also have the fault of the subordinates) on the cold shackles of responsibility.

4,Backstabbing
Subordinates poor performance is naturally a breakthrough for managers to dump the pot. According to Bernard Weiner (Bernard Weiner) study, employee performance is a function of four factors: ability, effort, task difficulty and luck. If employees are performing well and don't have to take the blame for their leaders, they are more likely to become "whistle blowers" when the "pot" falls from the sky. Of course, "smart" leaders are more likely to pass the buck to poor performers.

There are two types of underperformance: underperformance caused by uncontrollable factors such as luck and task difficulty, and underperformance caused by controllable factors such as ability and effort. In the former case, it is more likely that they will become "whistle blowers" by innocently "taking the blame". The latter, through no fault of their own, are natural candidates for the blame. Here there are two types of situations: one is passive backstabbing, becoming a silent person who covers up the problem. The other is active backstabbing.

Whether it is as a leader of the proactive backstabbing, or for the future to become a leader of the pro-confidant to do padding, the motivation behind this is the interests. Of course, the "backstabber" is not a back, the real destructive force is that they will use Alex Jordan (Alex Jordan) proposed means of self-enhancement, through the abstract instead of concrete, secondary instead of priority, counterfactual instead of the facts, and try to find a logical self-consistent pretext, so as to rationalize the poor performance, distorting the problem! solution-oriented. Leaders are also happy to distort the truth for their subordinates who are "shielding" them from the truth.

5,Reinforcement
Organizational contextual factors play a reinforcing role in the transition from "underperformance-attribution-blame-shifting" to "blame-shifting" and the ultimate distortion of problem-solving orientation. The financial accountability that accompanies performance evaluation creates a bottom-line mentality of "metrics only", which intensifies the perceived threat to the leader's position and reinforces the motivation for dumping. The trickle-down effect produced by the contagious nature of dumping creates a perverse culture of dumping within the organization, which in turn strengthens leaders' dumping behaviors and further misses the performance improvement opportunities nurtured by poor performance.

Fourth, how to deal with the phenomenon of dumping in the organization

1,Acknowledge and accept the mistakes, get rid of the dumping from the ideology
Managers must be soberly aware of the performance evaluation of the problems and errors will not be responsible for the transfer of the subject and cognitive changes disappear out of thin air, on the contrary, dumping will only make managers such as the "boiled frog" immersed in the responsibility of escaping the secret celebration, missing the opportunity to learn from the error; and the cumulative problems such as the ever-growing "Moose", one day sharp "horns" will poke through the organizational building.

Managers take the initiative to admit mistakes can set up a courage to take responsibility for the "leader" image, for subordinates to take responsibility for the manager, its power not only will not be weakened, but can be regenerated. This kind of power is a kind of flexible power, is a kind of influence, can improve the subordinate's internal sense of belonging, close the distance between each other.

2,Avoid the pitfalls of meritocracy and "perfectionism complex".

Water to clear, no fish, as known as "mankind's greatest CEO" Jack Welch (Jack Welch) said: "managers are too concerned about staff errors, there will be no one brave to try." Business is not a picture of perfection, but a picture book that is constantly being tinkered with in the midst of criticism and mistakes. Managers should remove the shackles of perfectionism, embrace imperfections in the workplace, and understand the situation of their employees.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's philosophy is to "embrace the unknown - even if it means uncertainty or the risk of failure," because it is not afraid to fail. Because they are not afraid to fail and do not have to pass the buck, their original results have been more influential than those of the National Institutes of Health.

3,Moving from pot-shifter to problem-solver

Elimination of "dumping" behavior, the need to change the role of managers from the role to become a problem solver. Mencius - Li Lou Shang said: "If you can't do something, ask for help." When Huawei faces a problem, it balances the internal forces of the organization through the management technique of "twisting the twist". Huawei believes that the employees and the organization are like two strands of rope twisting a twist, mutual constraints, common force, in order to achieve the right state, no matter which side of the withdrawal, will not be able to make the twine like two strands of rope twisted together as strong.

Civil Aviation of China once achieved the excellent record of "10th consecutive safe flight anniversary of transportation aviation". Adhering to the principle of accident investigation is not only to restore the flight process and analyze the cause of the accident, but also to avoid the recurrence of similar accidents. By adopting a forward-looking strategy, comparing the differences between the past performance level and the expected performance level, and correcting the deficiencies, we can fundamentally avoid the occurrence of the same kind of mistakes, and find the opportunities and methods for further improvement from the mistakes.

3,Sound accountability for performance evaluation and creating a blame-free culture

To curb the blame-shifting culture, it is necessary to improve the accountability system, repair the loopholes in performance assessment in a timely manner, and realize the fairness of the procedure, reasonable results and effective interaction. The key to perfecting accountability is to balance accountability for results with accountability for the process. When managers need to explain the decision-making process and be responsible for the process, they will reduce their self-interested behavioral tendency to shirk their responsibilities, and objectively and calmly analyze the reasons for poor performance instead of blindly dumping the "pot". At the same time also need to strengthen the checks and balances of horizontal and vertical internal hierarchical power structure.

Vertically, improve the subordinate performance advice mechanism and complaint mechanism, open up the fast channel for complaints, increase the opportunity for employees to speak out, so that management can hear the real voice of employees.

Horizontally, strengthen the collaborative ties between departments and departments, and between employees and employees, and guarantee horizontal and oblique communication between employees and colleagues or superiors.

In addition, the organization should leave room for the rigid system to operate and increase the emotional tension of performance evaluation. As the so-called "ethical and righteousness", we should strive to create a transparent system, a sound mechanism, emotional and righteous organizations with temperature, to achieve the responsibility of navigating, everyone to take responsibility, and fundamentally eradicate the "dumping" breeding ground. At the same time, the culture in the subtle, dripping through the stone, silent, such as engraved in the organizational behavior, performance evaluation should be adapted to the organizational culture.

Only in a no-pointing fingers culture can employees feel safe and no longer afraid of making mistakes, have the confidence to express their true ideas and seize the opportunity to solve problems, be a brave "whistleblower", and "dump" the seeds of the problem in the soil. They will be brave whistleblowers and keep the seeds of "shirking" in the soil.

V. Conclusion
Managers should not become the "dumpers", employees should not become the "backer", and the organization should not become the "mending pot" of the Shilohan. In the face of unsatisfactory performance gap, we need to clarify the power mechanism generated by managers dumping. From the level of perfect performance evaluation, enterprises should be in the "no responsibility for the aftermath" and "wrongdoing must be investigated" and "process accountability" and "accountability for results To seek a balance between "no responsibility for the aftermath" and "accountability for mistakes" and between "accountability for the process" and "accountability for the results", so as to curb the occurrence of downstream dumping at source.

From the dumpers own factors, as psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (Carl Gustav Jung) said: "Put your life in your own hands, you will find that you have no one else to blame." Managers should have the belief and confidence to overcome themselves, have the perseverance and courage to face the errors, strengthen the sense of responsibility, adhere to the problem-solving orientation, and promote the self-learning revolution in the errors to realize the regeneration of power with the determination of "scraping the bones".

From the perspective of creating a benign performance culture, enterprises should abandon the tendency of meritocracy, cut off the vines of the unreasonable shirking, eradicate the soil of shirking culture, return to the employee-centered performance management concept, create a more tolerant and tolerant culture and self-reliance: in the silence, to motivate each and every employee for sailing in the stormy waves of the enterprise boat ready to take the helm.