“I want it all and I want it now!” An examination of the etiology, expression, and escalation of excessive employee entitlement

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Excessive entitlement is a pervasive and pernicious social issue, one that has considerable significance for human resource management. Despite its implications for work settings, relatively little research has examined this construct through a management lens. In this paper, a definition of excessive entitlement is offered and a model describing how it is expressed and encouraged in organizational settings is proposed. Key human resource functions drawn from the practitioner literature on employee entitlement (recruitment and socialization tactics, performance appraisal and reward structure; Wellner, 2004) are situated as interacting with employee trait levels of excessive entitlement to trigger counterproductive work behaviors. To the extent counterproductive behaviors are rewarded, the psychological correlates of excessive entitlement will spiral in an upward fashion, ultimately reinforcing trait expression. In contrast, ignoring or punishing the behavioral outcomes of excessive entitlement will prompt “regulation,” whereby individuals disavow their entitled attitudes or “retribution,” which may include retaliation, disengagement, and turnover. The implications of this work, along with strategies for advancing the study of excessive entitlement in work settings, are discussed.