Advice-Seeking at Work: Reputation Concerns and Stereotypes

Abstract

In a large-sample experiment with white-collar professionals we investigate whether reputation concerns can impede knowledge flows. Seeking advice can improve performance but could change others’ beliefs about the seeker’s competence. We test how individuals resolve this trade-off and the role of others’ priors about competence in it, by varying whether a manager observes advice-seeking and the gender-stereotype of a knowledge task. We find a large and inefficient decrease in advice-seeking when it is observable. Others’ priors about competence cannot mediate this inefficiency. We find no evidence that managers interpret the decision to seek advice negatively, thereby documenting an important misperception about advice-seeking.