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Organizational responses to issue selling: A strong structuration theory approach
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Abstract
While organizations have reason to value member proactivity, their responses to it
are not entirely known. A form of proactivity, issue selling, “is the process by which
individuals affect others’ attention to and understanding of the events, developments, and
trends that have implications for organizational performance” (Dutton & Ashford, 1993,
p. 716). While research into issue selling is considerable, it has focused on what causes
issue sellers to sell, how they sell, and what happens to them after they sell. Less studied
are the organizational reactions to issue selling. The present study asked the research
question: How do organizations respond to issue selling?
Working from a conceptual framework informed by the theory and research on
issue selling (Dutton & Ashford, 1993), strong structuration (Stones, 2005), and
organizational response (Bansal, 2003), this case study of a multinational medical device
company examined responses to issue selling in three strategic situations relating to the
organization’s product development and management activities. By interviewing
associates at multiple levels and with varied roles in each issue, the study found that
rather than being defined as issue buyers, participants in an issue are better thought of as
responders who play varied roles in the issue, including as second-order sellers
themselves. Their responses follow patterns including complex, negotiable definitions of success; influence by responders at all levels; actions within existing positions and
mechanisms; and “single-option decisions”—up-or-down determinations of whether to
proceed with an issue as raised.
Participants disclosed cognitive practices and actions placing responders,
colleagues, the issue, and the organization in focus as the organization made progress
toward results on the issue. The findings blurred the boundaries between issue sellers and issue responders and challenged the validity of a merely transactional model of issue
selling. The results suggest that response in issue selling is a form of community building
that can be examined through theories and methods in fields as diverse as leadership,
organizational change, organizational culture, and social learning. Responders and issue
sellers alike will benefit from continuing research and practice application of how
responses to issue-selling events today shape what an organization will become tomorrow.
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This paper advances the understanding of managerial voice endorsement based on a self‐regulation perspective. We suggest that although managers might potentially benefit more from employees' upward voice when they are more depleted, they are paradoxically less likely to diligently process or endorse such voice under ego depletion. We draw from ego depletion theory and argue that when managers are more depleted of their self‐control resources, they will spend less cognitive effort in processing voice. In turn, they tend to reject employee voice due to status quo bias and confirmation bias. We further suggest that the detrimental effect of ego depletion on voice endorsement is stronger when the voicing employee is perceived as having low expertise. We conducted an experience sampling study surveying 62 managers about voice events they encounter at work over 10 days (Study 1) and an experiment with 198 managers (Study 2). These two studies support our hypotheses. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
We examine the effectiveness of economic and moral language used by employees when selling social issues to management. In contrast to prior work finding that employees believe it is best to use economic language to influence management to address social issues, we draw on the issue selling, persuasion, and behavioral ethics literatures to demonstrate that moral language is actually most influential-especially when the language is framed to align with the organization's values and/or mission. The results from a combination of 3 field survey studies and 1 experimental vignette study provide support for this hypothesis. In addition, we find support for obligation (i.e., manager's anticipated guilt), rather than inspiration (i.e., manager's prosocial motivation), as a mediator of this interactive effect. We discuss implications for literatures on issue selling, persuasion, and behavioral ethics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
This paper develops grounded theory to understand how and when experts in lower-power peripheral roles can develop influential relationships with higher-power line managers in core functions to regularly elicit their cooperation. I use data from an ethnographic study of experts in peripheral roles—mental health professionals hired by the U.S. Army to provide rehabilitative services to active-duty soldiers suffering from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—and the line managers in core functions they depended on for their soldier-care recommendations to be followed—their soldiers’ direct commanders. I analyze relational histories of 56 commander–provider dyads and detail a three-phase process model I refer to as “rapid relationality.” Through the process of rapid relationality, mental health professionals capitalized on short windows of opportunity to quickly develop influential relationships with commanders, despite lacking formal authority over them, before a series of minor conflicts or a major conflict threatened their burgeoning influence. My analysis suggests it is not only what peripheral experts do that allows them to elicit cooperation from line managers but also when and how quickly they do it that matters. Speed and taking early action are important because experts cannot predict when conflict will occur and hence may have short initial windows of opportunity for establishing an influential relationship. I further find that some experts have fewer tactics available to them or must use more time-consuming and energy-intensive tactics than others to achieve the same relational influence based on their personal characteristics (e.g., gender). As a result, it may be harder for some experts to achieve relational influence before their window of opportunity closes.
Aviation today is seen as a very safe industry, yet recent accidents have shown that vulnerabilities still exist. The literature has often drawn attention to the role played by top managers/CEO in running their businesses profitably, and at the same time keeping them safe from threats. Research has also investigated the way people at the sharp-end of organisations are ‘mindful’ of the possible threats that can occur in their day-to-day activities, and how they can anticipate (most of) them. But what about the role played by middle managers in ensuring safety in every organisational operation? Even if researchers now agree that middle managers’ actions are a valuable asset for organisations and central to pursuing key organisational outcomes, very little is known about how middle managers take safety into account in their daily operations, and the challenges they face. This paper reports on the safety-related practices and challenges of middle managers of the civil aviation industry. Within the Future Sky Safety project, over a two-year research activity, 48 middle managers from a range of aviation organisations agreed to talk about the strategies and actions they put in place on a routine basis, to embed safety in the daily operations. Methodologically, semi-structured interviews were conducted and the qualitative content analysis (QCA) method was used to make sense of the raw material, through a data-driven coding frame. The findings of this research suggest that the practices middle managers identify as central in relation to their role in the management of safety can be grouped into three high-level categories: (1) making decisions, (2) influencing key stakeholders to get the job done, and (3) managing information. This research adds knowledge in relation to the middle managers’ role in the management of safety, in particular shedding light on the competency that middle managers from the civil aviation industry rely on to get the job done when it comes to contributing to safety.
By integrating literature on proactive behavior, in particular voice behavior theory, with the attention-based view of the firm, we examine how the use of a set of initiative selling tactics influences the acceptance of subsidiary initiatives by MNC headquarters. The findings suggest that the initiative selling tactics that matter most for the headquarters acceptance of subsidiary initiatives are related to proactive efforts such as the preparation and the packaging of the subsidiary initiative. The paper contributes to academia and practice by providing a richer understanding of proactive behavior among subsidiaries in terms of the “voice tactics” used to get their subsidiary initiatives recognized and accepted by headquarters. The study uses data from a questionnaire survey of 110 MNC subsidiaries and qualitative interview data.
Purpose
This paper aims to use Stones’ strong structuration theory (SST) that combines Giddens’ duality and Archer’s analytical dualism to deal with the paradox of embedded agency, focussing on resistance, in the budgeting literature. It also applies this framework to an illustrative case study that examines a failed attempt to implement performance-based budgeting (PBB) in the Egyptian Sales Tax Department (ESTD).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have used SST as an analytical framework. Longitudinal case study data were collected from interviews, observations, discussions and documentary analysis and from publicly available reports and other media issued by the World Bank.
Findings
The SST framework identifies the circumstances in which middle managers as embedded agency have limited possibilities to change their dispositions to act and identify opportunities for emancipation in the wider social context in which they are embedded. The official explanation for the failure to implement PBB in Egypt was obstruction by middle managers. The findings of this study provide an alternative explanation to that published by the World Bank for the failure to institutionalise PBB in Egypt. It was found that the middle managers were the real supporters of PBB. Other parties and existing laws and regulations contributed to the failure of PBB.
Research limitations/implications
As a practical implication of the study, the analysis presented here offers an alternative interpretation of the failure of the Egyptian project for monitoring and evaluation to that published by the World Bank. This case and similar cases may enhance the understanding of how and when monitoring and evaluation technologies should be introduced at the global level to manage conflicts of interest between agencies and beneficiaries.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the extant management accounting literature on the use of ST in addressing the paradox of embedded agency in making or resisting structural change. It uses SST to integrate Giddens’ ST with critical realist theory, incorporating duality and dualism in a stronger model of structuration. The SST framework offers a means of analysing case studies that result from interactions and conjunctures between different groups of actors at different ontological levels. The paper also examines the issue of embedded agency in budgeting research using an illustrative case study from a developing country, Egypt.
This study examines issue selling (an early component of the change process in which higher-level managers are influenced to pay attention to issues). Building on the conservation of resources model, social contextual factors (role models for issue selling and inclusion in decision making) are proposed to explain when and how issue selling occurs during the early stages of change. This research breaks new ground by examining issue selling behavior (as observed by supervisors) in conjunction with willingness to issue sell. Results based on a sample of 191 employee–supervisor dyads suggest that role models positively contributed to willingness to issue sell, which was positively related to issue selling when individuals perceived that they were involved in decision making. To increase the likelihood that employees will engage in issue selling to facilitate change, managers should provide exposure to issue selling role models and should increase employees’ perceived inclusion in decision making.
Drawing on examples from a case study of a global product technology company, we discuss the mediating role of artifacts in position practice in project-based contexts. Findings revealed three types of mediation – professionalization, integration, and collaboration – and pointed out the key role of organizational remembering and forgetting in these mediation processes. These findings extend our understandings of how artifacts contribute to organizational practices. We discuss implications for theory and practice, and offer directions for future research.