Taxonomies of Job Tactics and Ethical Values for Influencing Up
As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I've listed below the seven categories of "Job Tactics" into which Ralston and colleagues group the 38 upward influence tactics in their Strategies of Upward Influence (SUI) instrument:1Good Soldier — Getting ahead through hard work that benefits the organization.
Rational Persuasion — Demonstrating with facts and skills-related accomplishments that one should be given consideration.
Ingratiation — Using subtle, indirect tactics to make oneself appear interpersonally attractive to someone at the superior level.
Image Management — Actively presenting oneself in a positive manner across the entire organization.
Personal Networking — Developing and utilizing an informal organizational social structure for one's own benefit.
Information Control — Controlling information that is restricted from others in order to benefit oneself.
Strong-Arm Coercion — Using illegal tactics, such as blackmail, to achieve personal goals.
In developing the SUI, Ralston and colleagues also identified a taxonomy, consisting of four hierarchical dimensions of "Western values," that would serve as "a baseline for comparing acceptable and unacceptable behavior using an American perspective." The four values dimensions are:
Organizationally Sanctioned Behaviors — Behaviors, such as working hard, that are usually prescribed and sanctioned for employees in organizations.
Non-Destructive, Legal Behaviors — Behaviors that do not directly hurt another person, but that are self-serving for the individual within the organization.
Destructive, Legal Behaviors — Self-serving behaviors, such as spreading rumors, that directly hurt others but are not extreme enough to be illegal.
Destructive, Illegal Behaviors — Extreme self-serving behaviors that directly hurt other and are illegal, such as stealing business documents.
Note that these four values dimensions are the source of the three dimensions used by Ralston and colleagues in their 2005 study, cited in an earlier post.3
It is also important to note that the SUI is not the only instrument used in research on how people attempt to exert upward influence. You can read about other instruments in the literature review included in an article Jane Terpstra-Tong and David Ralston published in 2002.2
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1 David A. Ralston, Robert A. Giacalone, and Robert H. Terpstra, "Ethical Perceptions of Organizational Politics: A Comparative Evaluation of American and Hong Kong Managers" (pdf), Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 13 (1994), pp. 989-999.
2 Jane Terpstra-Tong and David A. Ralston, "Moving Toward a Global Understanding of Upward Influence Strategies: An Asian Perspective with Directions for Cross-Cultural Research" (pdf), Asia-Pacific Journal of Management, Vol. 19 (2002), pp. 373-404.
3 David A. Ralston, Philip Hallinger, Carolyn P. Egri, and Subhatra Naothinsuhk, "The Effects of Culture and Life Stage on Workplace strategies of Upward Influence: A Comparison of Thailand and the United States" (pdf), Journal of World Business, Vol. 40 (2005), pp. 321-337.
Labels: Upward influence
posted by Karen Nelson @ 11:57 PM
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