How Workplace Failure Experiences Affect Employees' Judgments and Decisions: A Progressive Psychological Process of Self-Threat Perception and Defensive Cognition

Abstract

This paper will explore in concept how workplace failure experiences affect employees' judgments and decisions through a multi-stage psychological process of self-threat perception and defensive cognition. Rather than providing new empirical data, it compiles research on learning from failure, motivated cognition, self-control and judgment heuristics to present a connection between failure events, self-integrity concerns and biased decision-making. First, the different kinds of failures in organisations can lead to self-relevant appraisals, grief and threat, and thus determine whether people will learn adaptively or avoid defensively. Then, Prospect Theory and framing effects are combined to demonstrate how loss-oriented perceptions and threat-oriented narratives lead to systematic judgment and decision biases under risk. Based on research in self-affirmation, ego depletion and motivated reasoning, this paper puts forward a progressive model that shows how self-threat perception triggers defensive cognitive patterns to alter information search, attribution and option evaluation. Therefore, after a failure, we will focus on reinforcing the self-integrity and regulatory resources of the employees, rather than providing more data or rational analysis tools. Finally, the paper presents some suggestions for organisational behaviour that aims to convert failure experiences into more reflective and less defensive decision-making, but does not suggest that this change is easy to achieve.