Identity, Threat Aversion and Organisational Decision-Making: Experimental Evidence from Public Officials in the European Parliament

In any organisational decision-making process, distinct policy options are typically characterised by a number of advantages (or ‘opportunities’) and disadvantages (or ‘threats’). Individuals’ choices will depend on their opportunity–vs.–threat perceptions of the available options. In this article, we argue that individuals’ organisational identification constitutes a key determinant of this gain–loss-dependent threat perception. Specifically, we maintain that a stronger organisational identity affects individuals’ relative attention to good and bad elements in the payoff distribution by strengthening their motive to avoid a failure. That is, stronger identification generates a ‘prevention focus’ in individuals’ motivational basis for risky decisions. An original survey experiment with civil servants in the European Parliament (EP) finds significant supportive evidence for the empirical implications of our argument.