What do you recommend? The effects of communication on misreporting in autonomous teams

Many firms have begun granting teams greater autonomy in determining how they organise and report on their work. This study examines how communication influences (dis)honest reporting within such autonomous teams. Through a series of three experiments, we analyse how team members use communication to influence one another and steer their team's reporting decisions. Our first two experiments provide evidence of an asymmetric effect on honesty: while communication from initially dishonest team members corrupts initially honest team members, the latter fail to discipline the former, resulting in a convergence toward dishonesty. In the third experiment, where we make the adverse consequences of misreporting for the firm's owner salient to the team members, the convergence toward dishonesty disappears. Collectively, our findings are consistent with social norm theory, which suggests that when communication is present, it can be used to increase team misreporting depending on the activation and salience of different situational cues. Our study contributes to the literature on participative budgeting and dishonesty by revealing the process through which communication can escalate collective dishonesty in teams and identifying ways in which firms can mitigate this effect.