News
Employees tend to own workplace successes, but blame external factors for failures
Published: 27 March 2025
Nearly two-thirds of employees feel they’ve been ‘thrown under the bus’ by their colleagues—but an even higher number say they’ve never engaged in blame-shifting themselves. “The axe forgets, but the tree remembers,” says Jean-Nicolas Reyt, an Associate Professor of Organizational Management at ɬ Desautels. “When we hurt someone, we are quick to forget about it, but when people hurt us, we remember it forever. But there’s more to it than that, Reyt told HR Reporter. People tend to take personal credit their successes, and are more likely to attribute failure to external forces—like their colleagues.