Employee Entitlement: Is There A Universal Approach That We Can Use in the Organizational Settings?*

Abstract

Employee entitlement has been studied over the years, yet few human resources management scholars and managers expected it to be a common phenomenon, especially among younger employees. Therefore, there is a need for deeper insight into employee entitlement as it has been analyzed in different ways over the last years. Due to dynamically and rapidly changing organizational settings, employee entitlement should be considered as a context-dependent variable. Additionally, it does not have to be perceived explicitly as a negative factor, as there are certain circumstances in which employee entitlement may be beneficial for the organization. Proper understanding of it will be possible through studying the interactions between employee entitlement and other variables, such as organizational identification, identification with coworkers, organizational justice, leader-member exchange, team–member exchange, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive behavior. Factors that might affect the intensity of entitlement are discussed, as well as what we know about methods that can increase or decrease it. This article indicates the gaps and inconsistencies in existing research, simultaneously trying to find solutions and ideas for the difficulties encountered.