Potential consequences of employees

Potential consequences of employees’ responses to influence attempts
What meanings matter and why do they matter? The answer most likely depends on
the consequences or outcomes that are of concern. For example, in the determination of
work stress, personal control has been found to be a key factor (Karasek and Theorell,
1990). Thus, employees may be buffered from symptoms of stress, such as emotional
distress, when their supervisors give up control, such as through employee
involvement as a means of inducing employee compliance with requests. Stress and
burnout have been found to relate more generally to the employee’s perception of
supervisor consideration (Seltzer and Numeroff, 1988), so inconsiderate means of
influence (such as deceptive or manipulative ones) may be expected to predict greater
symptoms of stress, with considerate and respectful ones predicting lesser symptoms.
The employee’s wish to maintain membership in the organization, as indicated by
turnover intention, is another key outcome that can be affected by employees’
perceptions of their supervisors’ influence behaviors. Extensive research on employee
turnover (e.g. Mobley, 1982) points to the likely impact of employees’ inferences
concerning whether or not they are treated respectfully or with due consideration.
The employee’s basic attitudes toward the supervisor and his or her employing
organization also may be expected to be affected by perceptions of the supervisor’s
influence behaviors. These basic attitudes have been conceptualized and operationalized
as affective commitment to the supervisor and affective commitment to the organization,
and have been found to be influenced by aspects of interactions with supervisors
(Hellriegel et al., 1992). These commitments are believed to be important to other
outcomes involving motivation and performance (Mowday et al., 1979).
Assessing meanings of influence behaviors
How should the perceptions or meanings of supervisors’ influence behaviors be
assessed for the purposes of testing the model? One straightforward design would
require employees to rate not only the extent of occurrence of various behaviors and
various theorized consequences (organizational commitment, turnover intention, etc.),
but also various interpretations (respectfulness, directness vs indirectness, etc.).
A practical problem with this approach is that employees or their employers may
not be willing to spend the time required to report a wide range of perceptions about
influence tactics’ meanings along with the sets of ratings of tactics’ occurrences and
employees’ states (presumed consequences such as commitment) that only the
employees can provide. Thus, in many instances it may only be possible to examine the
roles of tactics’ meanings if some source other than the employees themselves can
supply information about those meanings.
Furthermore, many researchers believe that when ratings of theoretically
inter-related states are obtained from the same source (employees themselves, in this
instance) various forms of contamination or “rater bias” may occur. For example, a
Commitment,
turnover, and
stress
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meta-analysis by Ilies et al. (2007) indicated that the correlation of rated quality of
leader-member exchange with organizational citizenship behavior is higher when the
same source provides data for both variables.
For the present study it was expected that the contribution of rater bias or
related distortions to predictor-outcome associations could be reduced by obtaining
information about tactics’ meanings from informants other than the employees
surveyed about occurrence of tactics and about states of affective commitment as
well as other theorized outcomes. The tactics’ meanings were assessed in a
normative or nomothetic way by asking a separate community sample to rate each
tactic in terms of various characteristics (e.g. directness, respectfulness). These
ratings were then averaged and these average meanings were, in effect, attributed to
members of the employee sample in the manner detailed next. This application of a
consensual meaning is consistent with social power and influence theory as it has
been sketched here. The common, cultural frame of meanings shared by agents and
targets is part of what enables agents to anticipate (albeit imperfectly) the likely
extent of target compliance or other reactions, and to adjust tactic enactment
accordingly.
Methods
Overview of design
Two samples of subjects participated in this study, with each sample providing
different kinds of information needed to test the theoretical framework. The first
sample consisted of 180 employees of one public sector organization (an energy
utility). Participants in this employee sample provided us with ratings of their
supervisors’ frequency of use of nine influence tactics and of states of satisfaction
and other variables considered to be outcomes in our framework. The second
sample consisted of 316 individuals residing in the catchment area for a sample
survey. They provided data concerning dimensions of perception and meaning
underlying the nine supervisor influence tactics. The first group of participants is
referred to as the employee sample, and the second, the community sample. Data
from the community sample were used in computations to assign scores in the
employee sample for variables identified in the theoretical analysis, and for other
purposes of interpretation.