What should I say? Testing ways to reduce fear and increase disclosure of incivility in reference checks

Benjamin M Walsh, Brittany Heighton and Chloe Dingens

PLOS ONE, 2023, vol. 18, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: We utilize signaling theory as a foundation for testing ways to decrease reference providers’ fear of adverse consequences and increase disclosure of workplace incivility in reference checks. We focus on three reminders–commonly recommended by practitioners–that may be sent to reference providers in the instructions prior to the reference check: reminders of applicant consent, qualified privilege, and confidentiality. 420 supervisors were recruited via Prolific.co to complete a hypothetical reference check for the employee with whom they least like to work. Participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions in a two (applicant consent reminder: yes/no) X two (qualified privilege reminder: yes/no) X two (confidentiality reminder: yes/no) between-subjects design. Instructions before the reference check were manipulated in a manner that corresponded to their experimental condition, after which they completed measures of fear and incivility. Results showed no main effects, but two interactions. Applicant consent and qualified privilege interacted in relation to fear of adverse legal consequences, and confidentially and qualified privilege interacted in relation to reports of applicant incivility (p

Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290011 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 90011&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0290011

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290011

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().