WHAT IS THE ENTITLEMENT MENTALITY?
An entitlement mentality is someone’s psychological belief that he is entitled to something, no matter what today’s realities are. Detroit’s municipal workers, for example, evidently think change is for someone else, despite their employer’s dire financial straits. Convincing public workers to make the psychological leap from yesterday’s entitlement mentality of a guaranteed tomorrow to a chancier future when rewards are based on performance is difficult, because emotion trumps logic. But if emotion trumps logic, how then can Illinois officials stop wrestling with each other in Springfield and focus on changing employees’ entitlement psychology when Illinois revenues are down, the state can’t pay its bills and the red ink is rising? The way to counter an entitlement psychology is to develop a counter-psychology in the form of a shared mission that rallies employees to a common cause: they are partnering with their employer to improve community service, cut labor costs and the public ta
