You’re a bright, female investment analyst about to give a major presentation to a group of bankers supporting a corporate acquisition. After walking in and meeting the bankers before you give the presentation, you’re asked by your boss to “be a dear and serve them coffee.” Imagine the insult and awkwardness of such a situation—what do you do? Do you carry through with the task, sacrificing your dignity or doing something wrong because you can’t afford to lose the job? Or do you speak up?

A group of Swiss occupational health researchers have recently started a program of research on illegitimate tasks, or tasks that violate “norms about what can reasonably be expected from a given person” in a job. Therefore, illegitimate tasks are unethical and violate or offend one’s professional and task identity. What might cause supervisors and managers within organizations to allocate these kinds of tasks? One study points to a variety of organizational characteristics, including competition for resources among departments or units, unfair resource allocation procedures, and an unclear decisional structure.

Researchers have found that these sorts of tasks can have some nasty outcomes. For one, illegitimate tasks lead to increased stress and CWB, even after controlling for the effort-reward imbalance, organizational justice, and personality traits. Illegitimate tasks can literally keep you up at night: One study found that, on days in which these tasks were performed, the employees took longer to fall asleep and woke up more often in the middle of the night. Another study found that these tasks lead to high negative affect and psychological detachment at the end of the workday. Other studies found that illegitimate tasks lead to lowered self-esteem and job satisfaction from day to day, along with increases in anger and depression. Illegitimate tasks can also cause people to want to leave their jobs, although if their leader was appreciative of them, they were less likely to want to leave.

Questions 

1. How do you think employees should respond when given illegitimate tasks? How can an organization monitor the tasks it assigns to employees and ensure that the tasks are legitimate? Explain your answer. 

2. Is there ever a case in which illegitimate tasks should be tolerated or “rightfully” given? Explain your answer. 

3. How should the criterion of “legitimacy” be determined? Explain.