Improving the Owner-Manager's Handling of Subordinate Resistance to Unpopular Decisions (1986)

IMPROVING THE OWNER/MANAGER'S HANDLING OF SUBORDINATE RESISTANCE TO UNPOPULAR DECISIONS Owners and managers of small organizations must inevitably implement some decisions that will be resisted by their subordinates. Two general categories of decisions confront all owner/managers.1 The first category involves decisions that subordinates will comply with without question, since these decisions are seen as a legitimate part of the managerial function. The second category encompasses those decisions that subordinates do not perceive as being a legitimate component of the manager's position. These decisions will be questioned and/or resisted. When faced with making the second type of decision, an owner/manager must implement the decision in such a way as to minimize subordinate resistance which could disrupt the work flow. Because smaller businesses tend to have flatter' organizational structures with fewer levels separating the owner/ manager from the employees, subordinate resistance can have a greater impact on an organization's effectiveness. As Mechanic has noted,2 an efficient organization is one in which control exerted over subordinates is barely perceivable. 1 H. A. Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization 3rd ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1956). 2 D. Mechanic, Sources of Power of Lower Participants in Complex Organizations,' Administrative Science Quarterly (vol. 7, 1962), pp. 349-64. In addition to identifying effective compliance-gaining methods, an owner /manager should know what actions subordinates will take when they do not accept an decision.3 If owner managers can predict subordinates noncompliant actions ahead of time, they can anticipate how best to respond to them. Thus, small business owner/managers need to know first how to identify effective compliance-gaining techniques, and second they need to know how to anticipate actions that subordinates are likely to take when they do not agree with the owner/manager's decision. 3 J. Pfeffer and G. Salancik, The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective (New York: Harpey & Row Publishers, 1978). In order to investigate the first issue, a sample of subordinates from a number of small businesses was asked to give reasons for complying with various decisions which had been made by the managers of these businesses. The degree to which individual subordinates give consistent reasons for their compliance across different types of decisions was examined. The study also looked at whether certain personal characteristics of individual subordinates were associated with their preferences for particular compliance-gaining techniques used by their owner/managers. To study the second issue, subordinates were asked about what actions they had taken in the past when they disagreed with their owner/manager's decisions. The degree to which individual subordinates were consistent in their choice of actions across different decisions was also examined. Finally, questions were asked to determine whether the personal characteristics of subordinates were associated with their choice of actions. METHOD Preliminary Data Collection Fifteen top-level managers from a variety of small businesses (e.g., banks, restaurants, manufacturing firms) located in the Midwest were contacted by the researchers for one-on-one, 60-minute, structured interviews. After being given a clear understanding of what the researchers meant by an unpopular decision,' each manager was asked to recall the most decision that he or she had implemented in the past and to describe these decisions. Next, each manager was asked to describe the techniques or strategies used to gain subordinate compliance with these decisions. Examinations of the individual interview responses revealed strong agreement among the 15 managers about the types of decisions which were most difficult to implement. …