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It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Often Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests

By: Jaewon Yoon, Grant Donnelly and Ashley V. Whillans
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:56
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Abstract

Setting deadlines can improve productivity. Yet, miscalibrated deadlines are a major source of stress, undermining employees’ health and happiness. An effective strategy to maximize the benefits of deadlines while minimizing the costs could be to set task deadlines and adjust them as needed. However, results from six studies (N = 4,297) show that employees frequently avoid requesting extensions on adjustable deadlines, instead submitting suboptimal work. Employees’ reluctance to ask for deadline extensions is driven by self-presentation concerns: employees believe that their supervisors will view them as incompetent if they request a deadline extension. In contrast to these beliefs, supervisors actually perceive extension requests as a sign of greater motivation (vs. incompetence). These findings suggest that employees often underutilize a proactive behavior at work—making extension requests on adjustable deadlines—due to incorrect perspective taking and suffer from unnecessary time stress as a result.

Keywords

Extension Request; Impression Management; Employees; Time Management; Perception

Citation

Yoon, Jaewon, Grant Donnelly, and Ashley V. Whillans. "It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Often Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-064, January 2019. (Revised August 2019.)

Supplemental Information

Appendix
https://osf.io/rsp8g/

About The Author

Ashley V. Whillans

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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