Why open secrets exist in organizations

In 2017, The New York Times broke the news of media mogul Harvey Weinstein’s apparent decadeslong pattern of sexual abuse and harassment. As details emerged it became clear that Weinstein’s transgressions were not unknown to Hollywood insiders. They were, in fact, an “open secret.”

Indeed, our research shows that when multiple individuals know about an issue, each of them experiences a diffusion of responsibility or the sense that they need not personally take on any costs or burden associated with speaking up.

Our research

We found these results consistently across three studies. Our first was in the India branch of a Fortune 500 electronics company, in which we surveyed 132 employees (from 25 teams) and their managers about their work and how often they spoke up in the team. We found that the more employees observed problems that they thought were also observed by their peers, the less willing they were to speak up to their managers about those problems.

In the second, we conducted a behavioral experiment with 163 undergraduates. Students read about an issue concerning the lack of shuttle buses between distant campus buildings. As we expected, students who believed their peers were also aware of the issue reported a greater sense of diffusion of responsibility compared to those who believed they were the only ones aware of it.

In a third study, 440 working adults read a realistic scenario about a problem with a product they were creating in their unit. Again we found that participants were less likely to report being willing to speak up about the problem to company management when their peers also knew about the problem, because they felt psychologically less responsible for raising concern.

What to take away

MANAGERS should tell employees that their voices are not redundant and that they need to share their opinions even if others have the same information. Managers who explicitly reward rather than punish acts of individual courage can get their employees off the sidelines and acting as engaged citizens at the workplace.