Some ambitious office workers will stop at nothing to get ahead.

一些有野心的办公室职员会为了晋升不择手段。

And the use of email has provided an entire new box of dirty tricks for employees hoping to climb the career ladder.

电子邮件的使用就给了那些想往上爬的职员们一个耍花招的新渠道。

Pushy¹ office workers keen to impress bosses are increasingly using 'ego² mail' as a way to get ahead of their colleagues.

爱出风头的员工热衷于讨好老板，而且越来越频繁地使用“邮件自荐”以赶超其他同事。

And it seems men are the worst offenders³.

在这场角逐中，男性职员好像更加肆意妄为。

Showing off – or showing a colleague up - by copying management into an email thread is becoming more common, according to a study from a Cambridge scholar.

一位剑桥学者表示，通过把邮件抄送给管理人员，从而推销自己或把某位同事比下去的方式，已越来越普遍。

Professor David De Cremer, of Cambridge University's Judge Business School, found that workers who regularly CC, or 'carbon copy,' their boss into email replies do so to unsettle their co-workers.

剑桥大学贾奇商学院的教授大卫·德·克莱莫发现，有职员经常把邮件抄送给老板是为了给其他同事使绊儿。

'This finding suggests that when your co-workers copy your supervisor⁴ very often, they may be doing so strategically, as they consciously know what the effect will be on you,' he wrote in the Harvard Business Review.

“这说明，当你的同事经常把邮件抄送给老板，他们也许是在耍手段，因为他们知道这样做会对你产生什么样的影响”，克莱莫在《哈佛商业评论》上写道。

Men who 'have no shame' are far more likely to engage these underhand tactics than women, according to Professor Tom Jackson of Loughborough University.

拉夫堡大学教授汤姆·杰克逊说道，“寡廉鲜耻”的男性比女性更有可能采取这些不正当的诡计。

'Anecdotally from our research I would say that males are much more focused on doing this. Females might know how to do it but maybe stop short of actually doing it.

“从我们的研究来看，我想说，男性更执着于这些勾当，女性可能知道怎么去做，但是她们在真的要这么干的时候可能就停手了。”

'Males have no shame - they just go ahead and do it,' he said.

“男性没有负罪感——他们想做就做了，”杰克逊说。

The method does seem to work, he added, because managers often remember pushier⁵ employees when promoting members of staff.

他还说，由于在提拔员工时，管理者往往记住的是那些更爱出风头的员工，所以“邮件自荐”这个办法似乎管用。

The ego email tactics could mean that women are missing out on promotions⁶ that are instead handed to male colleagues less embarrassed about using messages to show off.

邮件自荐策略意味着女性会错失晋升机会，而男同胞会取而代之，因为他们在采取这个策略时，并不觉得难堪。

Some office workers go out of their way to email bosses at anti-social hours to show their commitment to the job. The study found that many would schedule messages to be sent to management late at night or early in the morning to make it appear they are working even when they are not.

一些办公室员工会费尽心思地在非正常时间段内发邮件给上司，以表明自己对工作的热爱。研究发现，许多员工会把发送信息的时间设定在深夜或清晨，这样就好像他们一直在工作，然而并不是。

This sort of behaviour could increase illness and stress in the workplace, according to experts.

专家称这种行为会增加工作环境里的疾病和压力。

David D'Souza, of human resources organisation⁷ the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said ego emailing was a sign of an unhealthy working environment in which employees were 'fearful' for their jobs.

人力资源机构人事开发特许协会的大卫·苏沙说，邮件自荐标志着一种不健康的工作环境，在这种环境下，员工会对自己的工作产生恐惧感。

'It's very important for organisations to make their decisions based on competence⁸, not levels of self-promotion,' he warned.

大卫·苏沙警告说：“各个机构要根据能力做出决策，而不是看'自我推销'的水平，这很重要。”