Harm or Harmony? Error Cover-up Behaviors At Work

Abstract

Instances constantly occur in the workplace wherein one notices errors made by coworkers and chooses not to report to others but rather handle them in a secluded way. However, research on employee errors has not examined employee cover-up of coworkers’ errors. We identified proactive and passive error cover-up as two dimensions of error cover-up behavior and defined proactive error cover-up as one intentionally handling a coworker’s error without calling attention from others and passive error cover-up as one purposefully disregarding a coworker’s error. Using three studies, we found that (1) employee high-quality relationships with other team members (TMX) is positively related to proactive error cover-up; (2) psychological safety is negatively related to passive error cover-up; (3) proactive error cover-up is positively related to team performance while passive error cover-up is negatively related to team performance. Our findings contribute to a better comprehension of employee cover-up of peer errors.