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Employee referral programs that encourage employees to refer individuals from their social network for positions in their organization are an increasingly important HR practice. Previous research has mostly conceptualized employee referrals as beneficial acts towards the organization and provided evidence on factors that influence the likelihood of making an employee referral, but has largely disregarded the referrals’ quality. Hence, previous findings on employee referrals might only apply to high quality referrals, but not to poor referrals, i.e. when employees knowingly refer candidates who are unmotivated or perform poorly. Building on social exchange theory, we therefore extend previous studies and focus on internal, prosocial, and external motives for employee referrals that can be conceptualized as counterproductive work behavior. We find a disturbingly high number of participants indicating that they would knowingly engage in a poor employee referral. In detail, we demonstrate that while affective organizational commitment is negatively related to the likelihood of making a poor employee referral, strong ties with the referral candidate and the presence of a monetary bonus are positively related. Furthermore, we investigate the cultural context of social exchange relationships; we find that in-group collectivism moderates the relationship between tie strength and the likelihood of poor referrals. Our study offers important implications for HR management theory and practice.

Employee referrals as counterproductive work behavior? Employees’ motives for poor referrals and the role of the cultural context