The relentless pursuit of perfectionism: A review of perfectionism in the workplace and an agenda for future research

• Author: Anna Carmella G. Ocampo,Simon Lloyd D. Restubog,Lu Wang,Kohyar Kiazad,Neal M. Ashkanasy
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2400
• Date: 01 February 2020
• Published date: 01 February 2020

The relentless pursuit of perfectionism: A review of

perfectionism in the workplace and an agenda for future

research

Anna Carmella G. Ocampo

1

|Lu Wang

1

|Kohyar Kiazad

2

|Simon Lloyd D. Restubog

3,4

|

Neal M. Ashkanasy

4

1

Research School of Management, Australian

National University, Acton, ACT, Australia

2

Centre for Global Business, Monash Business

School, Melbourne, VC, Australia

3

School of Labor and Employment Relations

and Department of Psychology, University of

Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, IL, USA

4

UQ Business School, The University of

Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

Correspondence

Anna Carmella G. Ocampo, Research School of

Management, Australian National University,

LF Crisp Building 26C, Kingsley Street, Acton,

ACT 2601, Australia.

Email: carmella.ocampo@anu.edu.au

Funding information

Australian Government Department of Educa-

tion and Training

Summary

The pursuit of perfectionism resonates with many individuals across workplaces

resulting in a recent flurry of research on the topic. Although extant research has

examined the costs and benefits of perfectionism at work, these efforts are scattered

across multiple disciplines and utilize varying conceptualizations. As a result, we lack a

coherent understanding of how perfectionism influences work behavior. To address

this issue, we integrate the nascent but fragmented perfectionism at work literature,

including both empirical findings and theoretical perspectives. We introduce and dis-

cuss a future research agenda that addresses not only the need to broaden under-

standing of perfectionism's antecedents, processes, and boundary conditions but

also its multilevel applications and methodological limitations. Our review will enable

organizational scholars to develop a deeper understanding of how perfectionism ren-

ders its influence in the workplace.

KEYWORDS

integrative review,multilevel, perfectionism, work

1|INTRODUCTION

Right before he exhibited his paintings in Paris in May 1908, impres-

sionist painter Claude Monet took one final look at his 3 years of work.

He then took a knife and a paintbrush and destroyed the would‐be

masterpieces (Levine, 1994). Although the paintings had already

received praise from influential critics, Monet explained, “When I am

dead I shall find their imperfections more bearable”(King, 2017, p.

36). Throughout his career, Monet destroyed almost 500 paintings

and even insisted, “My life has been nothing but a failure, and all that's

left for me to do is to destroy my paintings before I disappear”

(McNearney, 2017, p. 3). Perhaps less well known than the foregoing

story is how Monet's pursuit of perfectionism also impacted those

around him. His wife wrote, “Today, Monet is so very frustrating …

He punctures canvases everyday it is truly distressing. One day, things

are not too bad; the next day all is lost”(Levine, 1994, p. 207).

Although some may argue that Monet's perfectionism might have con-

tributed to his success as one of the most important figures in the

impressionist painting tradition (Seitz, 1983), perfectionism may have

also constituted a debilitating affliction that resulted in numerous life

challenges. In this article, we present a comprehensive review of the

intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences of perfectionism in the

work context, with the aim of also generating new research directions

for organizational scholars interested in perfectionism.

Perfectionism, broadly defined as a tendency to set unrealistically

high standards of performance (Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate,

1990) and characterized by biased and overcritical evaluations of the

self and others (Hewitt & Flett, 1991), has received increasing atten-

tion from scholars over the past three decades (Stoeber, 2018).

According to Curran and Hill (2019), the reason for this interest is

This article is based on Anna Carmella G. Ocampo's doctoral dissertation.

Received: 14 November 2017 Revised: 14 June 2019 Accepted: 20 June 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2400

144 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job J Organ Behav. 2020;41:144-168.

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT

ISSUE

compelling: Cultural shifts such as tougher social and economic condi-

tions and heightened meritocracy—whereby individuals are constantly

“sorted, sifted, and ranked”(p. 4)—actively encourage the rise of per-

fectionism across the industrialized world. Researchers (Bakker &

Schaufeli, 2008; Janssen & Van Yperen, 2004) further demonstrated

that organizations increasingly expect and require their employees to

attain near‐impossible performance standards, to go beyond assigned

work duties, to take initiative in everything they do, and to be commit-

ted to their own professional development. As a result, and as Stoeber,

Davis, and Townley (2013) pointed out, perfectionism is becoming

increasingly legitimized in today's workplaces, and many individuals

are encouraged to strive for perfection by investing a painstaking

amount of time and effort into their work.

Research inquiry on the role of perfectionism in organizations has

spanned diverse fields, most notably psychology, education, sport sci-

ence, counseling,and medicine, resulting in a highly fragmented and dis-

organized literature. The lack of a shared understanding of how

perfectionism influencesbehavior can thus impede the development of

a cumulative and integrated body of knowledge that builds systemati-

cally on previousevidence and theory. Additionally, althoughthe prolif-

eration of research onperfectionism has generated a number of recent

reviewsand meta‐analyses (e.g.,see Harari, Swider, Steed, & Breidenthal,

2018; Hill & Curran, 2016; Limburg, Watson, Hagger, & Egan, 2017;

Lloyd, Schmidt, Khondoker,& Tchanturia, 2015; Smith, Vidovic, Sherry,

Stewart, & Saklofske, 2017; Smith et al., 2016; Stoeber & Damian,

2016), less attention has been given to the role of perfectionismin the

workplace froman organizational behavior perspective.We believe that

a comprehensive review of the perfectionism literature in relation to

organizational behavior research is especially timely and valuable for

three reasons, as follows.

First, in our review, we focus on the consequences of perfectionism

in the workplace and therefore do not include studies utilizing samples

consisting of students or nonworking adults. This deliberate sample

selection is not trivial but represents a significant distinguishing feature

of our review because of our focus on the organizational context (Johns,

2006). That is, our review captures the unique effects of perfectionism

on employees' behavior at work rather than students' behavior in

achievement contexts and school environments. We also move beyond

the five‐factor model of personality (Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001) as

the only conceptual lens to study perfectionism at work, to include addi-

tional theoretical perspectives to enrich our understanding of perfec-

tionism in the workplace. For instance, in the most extensive work to

date, Harari et al. (2018) focused on perfectionism's association with

the Big Five personality dimensions and work outcomes (i.e., work

effort, psychological work state, and well‐being). In our review, we pro-

vide a comprehensive account of the various ways and mechanisms

through which perfectionism shapes employees' behavior, by also pre-

senting alternative theoretical perspectives that have been applied in

perfectionism at work research.

Second, we summarize and synthesize the complex conceptualiza-

tions and definitions of perfectionism for organizational behavior

scholars. Although the diverse conceptualizations of perfectionism have

all received support and generated significant empirical research, it is

less clear how these conceptualizations of perfectionism relate to one

another—thereby stymieing theoretical and empirical advancements in

perfectionism at work scholarship. Thus, we present existingconceptu-

alizations and dimensions associated with the perfectionism construct

to aid organizational scholars wishing to navigate the nascent research

and theorizing on perfectionism at work. In doing so, our review should

allow organizational scholars to study perfectionism at work in a more

integrated and systematic manner.

Third, an important goal of our review is not just to take stock of pre-

vious literature but to stimulate future interest in perfectionism at work,

especially for organizational behavior scholars. To this end, we extend

existing research on perfectionism by generating specific suggestions

and recommendations to guide future management scholarship in this

area. We therefore propose a set of theory‐and practice‐based recom-

mendations to stimulate future research on perfectionism at work.

We structure our review in six sections. In the first section, we dis-

cuss how perfectionism is conceptualized and measured, present some

existing conceptual models, and clarify differences and overlaps

among those conceptualizations. In the second section, we summarize

the influence of perfectionism on emotions, cognition, behaviors, and

physical health. Here, we review the broader literature on perfection-

ism to provide a holistic understanding of how perfectionism renders

its influence in organizational behavior research. In the third section,

we describe our review methodology. Next, we provide a systematic

review of perfectionism at work following three integrative themes:

intrapersonal consequences, interpersonal consequences, and moder-

ators and mediators. Then, in the fifth section, we discuss three major

theoretical perspectives that have been used to study perfectionism in

the workplace. In the final section, on the basis of our review of the

literature, we discuss several key gaps in the existing literature and

offer directions for future research.

2|PERFECTIONISM: CONCEPTUALIZA-

TION AND MEASUREMENT

2.1 |History of perfectionism research

Perfectionism research originated in the psychodynamic theories of

Adler (1938/1998) and Horney (1950). Adler theorized that the pur-

suit of perfection is an innate and adaptive aspect of human develop-

ment used to mask or offset personal shortcomings. He cautioned,

however, that excessive perfectionistic pursuits could be dysfunc-

tional as individuals are “perpetually comparing themselves with the

unattainable ideal of perfection, are always possessed and spurred

on by a sense of inferiority”(pp. 35–36).

This line of theorizing prompted early perfectionism scholars to

focus on differentiating between positive and negative forms of per-

fectionism. Hamachek's (1978) seminal framework distinguished

between normal and neurotic perfectionism. Normal perfectionism

involves setting high and reasonable goals while taking pleasure in

the achievement of such goals. Conversely, neurotic perfectionism

involves setting high and seemingly unattainable goals, accompanied

by the inability to derive pleasure from one's performance (Cox, Enns,

OCAMPO ET AL.145