What HR Managers Must Know about Employee Sabotage - Dissertation Example

What HR Managers Must Know about Employee Sabotage 1.0 Introduction Misunderstanding and lack of proper communication between Managers and their supervisors catapult into a serious problem of lack of empathy or coordination. Misrecognition of the point of view of the managers representing and laying out the rules of the organization can become quite a demanding task that their subordinates may not be willing to undertake. This is because, either they are not being able to see beyond the primary oppression of the rules or they are eaten up by pressing worries of offending their managers by raising their voice and concern. In On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, Thomas Carlyle1 explicated how a leader or the one in a controlling position (like the manager) is the stereotype of authoritative power and employees always tend to see him as the archetypal person from whom power originates. Such confusion in socio-cultural and historical bas of knowledge of a person combined with his/her personal mental bent may lead to a lot of fallible ideas about one’s own manager, who similarly may be thwarted from taking an effective action due to his own mental blocks. This is the problem of perception. 2.0 What is Perception? Perception of a person (in an organization) may be defined as a cognitive information processing process that enables us to interpret and understand our environment.2 Hence, it explains how Perception functions through the Social Information Processing Model where it centers on the concept of bounded rationality. In such a model the perception is basically guided either by partial or selective attention, distorted through the subjects’ own mental capability or the kind of meaning that he/she chooses to give to any given “raw” situation. Then the factors like memory and how they remember those given situations also influence and control perspective. Thus perceptions are victims of social generalizations, mental understanding of people’s characteristics, wish-fulfillment, make the mistake from being too judgmental about a person’s superficial attributes and also be selective in guiding one’s understanding of another person or situation that one deems plausible. 2.1 External and Internal Causation Attribution theory attaches two types of explanation for things that happened in the above-explained paragraph, i.e. it gives two kinds of explanation: External Attribution and Internal Attribution. Thus the question naturally arises that by knowing the kinds of attribution that people make or subordinates make, in this case, can managers control their behaviour? When internal attribution is enforced or rather induced with care it is indeed easy to implement. It happens because when people make an internal attribution for their actions, they also change their attitudes and beliefs about themselves. Thus, the desired behavior follows naturally. What about the use of external attributions? Through rewards and punishments, the actions only follow as long as the reward or punishment matters to the subject. The reward or punishment prevents people from making an internal attribution and thus acquires not an internally motivated habit to produce the desired behavior. Instead, they expect some external agent to cause their actions. 3.0 Perception and Managers Subordinates may feel uncomfortable about the supervisors’ possession of higher power (to make them conform to his views) and most of the time their perspectives are thus more distorted under a sense of oppression. This may reduce right understanding of managers perspective, which is seen as threatening and thus subordinates try not to think in his/her way so as not to be engulfed or “change” into a person who can be manipulated according to the managers wishes. Hence, by maintaining a somewhat resistant perspective they feel less overpowered and freer. However, managers may take this stance of positively using their power for effective decision-making, which constitutes rationality of decision, acceptance of decision by subordinate and effective time given to make the decision. Positive power held by a manager may also stimulate interest among his/her subordinates to view the organizational work from a newer perspective. Even if that work objective does not coincide with the manager, but may contain the greater interest of the firm or organization, thereby generating greater awareness of the mission. Thus, this idea may be contested further by saying that managers may broaden and elevate the interests and perspectives of their employees, even while generating awareness, acceptance and mission that give them the powers to make employees look beyond their narrow interests (perspectives). This may also help managers to fuel employee interest towards a bigger organizational goal, enhanced capacity towards heightened productivity and loyalty towards the organization. 3.1 Traits of Effective Managers Difference in perspective and the understanding that subordinates may never understand the supervisors’ point of view must help managers approach them with added caution and enhance their leadership qualities to minimize the perspective friction. In 1994, House and Podsakoff3 drew some effective qualities of managers who were highly successful at what they did by influencing his/her subordinates. They performed successfully in assimilating subordinate perspectives by fitting theirs to his/her vision and these were obtained through various empirical data. They concluded by deriving several behavioral similarities that they saw in those successful managers. They are namely, confidence in their team members, self-sacrifice, persistence, passion, vision to persuade followers, good image, confidence in followers, and acceptance for employee suggestion. These qualities if nurtured and practiced keeping in mind the inherent perspective problem in subordinates and their unwillingness to empathize with the team manager, the manager may be able to make quick progress by winning the confidence of employees even if he does not get them to agree with him completely: he may lead them. While the manager-member relations, their mission towards implementing a successful task structure, and sticking by it and have the positive potential to deal with difficult or challenging situation, helps to determine the best kind of supervisor. Again, effective managers might be those who can mould their followers as similar to their motives as possible, in terms of organizational mission, goal and need for superior work. In addition, the manager’s supervisionary style also must include an open attitude towards his employees in terms of support, instruction and participation, since it may help restore a democratic yet obedient atmosphere that would help propel the team’s work forward. The capacity for individual and managerial understanding otherwise may become too oppressive for subordinates. 3.2 Employee Perception and Negative Managerial Behaviour Interestingly specific types of managerial behavior can bring about potential influence on subordinate perspectives and help them to see the manager’s perspective. Abusive and ill-tempered or ill-mannered managers (even a potential for sexual harassment) may produce a detrimental effect on his/her subordinates. It might just bring negative outcomes at both individual and organizational levels. Quine (1999)4 explains this feature about ill-mannered managers who raised the level of grudge amongst his/her subordinates by creating a very negative feeling amongst them. Thus, subordinates who were the victims of manager misdemeanor showed far lesser levels of quality performance and even performed below their own level of potential due to an instinctive and emotional block arising out of job dissatisfaction. Such tension also helped in increasing level of stress and higher level of friction that gave way to depression, reduced level of creativity, low performance, lot of repressed anxiety, and continued feeling of insecurity. Thus, when a manager uses justified punishment or does not reward performance due to certain personal perspectives or preferences, like giving more importance or favor to one employee (who may be better in his work or vice versa) over the other, it could lead to a sense of injustice. Loss of trust over the manager’s capability to guide him/her is another outcome thereby creating an oppositional perspective within the employee. There are factors like reduced sense of ambition or just the opposite, which again depends on the inherent nature of the subordinate. If the supervisor takes time and energy to show interest in his/her employee’s feelings concerned with their daily achievement in work and take the time to provide a complete and adequate explanation for his (seemingly unjustified) decisions, and treats subordinates with dignity, respect, and civility, the outcome may be different. It may make employees more spirited about their work and make them face greater challenges or it may even help managers and employees more conducive to each other’s work and enable a overall creative participation from both sides. The outcome is thus much more proactive and positive: what we can call a win-win situation. On the other hand, if the manager acknowledges the good performance of an employee and encourage others to follow the same target (of reaching their fullest self-potential) without comparing him to the superior subordinate (who performed better than the other did), the manager might also score points with his subordinates in this case. In short, if the actual target of a manager remains that he must make his subordinates stick to the organizational thirst for superior performance and growth and also get the subordinates to do so thereby accomplishing the organizational goals effectively and powerfully, the manager must motivate the employees constantly. However due to resistance from them, and the kinds that we discussed before may hinder his objective. Nevertheless, a manager must try and intellectually stimulate his/her subordinates towards a common goal or mission (like appealing to their creativity or team target and their professional skills and their common passions) without encroaching in those areas of their sense of self-worth or identity and integrity. Thus while making them understand his/her own representative of the organizational goal, s/he must get them to understand it by trying to sell that perspective to them or by appealing to their ideas first. This may be done by brainstorming about a desired and productive a direction. This does not end here. The managers’ work is then to align the subordinates to that very set goal, thus motivating and inspiring them by being less educative or administrative in terms of direct use of power. Through the degrees of democratic participation related to decision-making, which will give the manager a fair idea of his employees’ perspective when brainstorming in open and encouraging them to speak up and debate for the company’s benefit. 4.0 Limitations of Managerial Perceptions In any organization where job performance is under subordinate control, due to work done as a team, and where employees could devote more or less time to job performance by choice, managers and their perspectives (if different) must reflect the entire team performance (with less and more conformity from different subordinates). The result thus becomes the goal. They do not have to depend on a single employee to carry forward “their” perspectives and assimilate them well enough to act them out successfully for the good of the organization. A number of limitations may be pointed out here too. First, the managers must always ask themselves whether their perspective is always the best in reflecting the company’s mission. Thus, when left to their own findings, managers, being human, too, may commit the error of faulty self-reporting. Such approaches may be suspected as they introduce many possible perception errors. What a supervisor says he/she would do in a given decision-making situation and what he/she would actually do are often quite different. Most supervisors generally use a more democratic style than what is perceived by their followers and others and vice versa. It is difficult to evaluate the impact of perception errors. Another grave pitfall may be the usual problems associated with short-term empirical studies and conclusions drawn on their basis. Again, another shortcoming also arises in this case as one is unable to assess with steadfast surety, why and how a supervisor shall perceive the problem and what kind of subordinate reactions shall he excite or give rise to. Studies involving such recent theories like the vertical dyad linkage theory explained in Crouch & Yetton, 19885, suggest newer angles of effective communication that may help break down barriers of perspective problems. Models like conflict management or empowerment theory (Conger & Kanungo, 1988)6 with various suggestions, too, may be limited because it deals with a limited aspects of managerial behavior and various perspectives and issues that such behavior raise amongst employees. The model empirically approaches all data that are described from the subordinate’s perspective and those stand as a testimony of subjective experiences rather than objective truths. Situations recorded thus testify to the fact that situations that are personally felt and recorded cannot get past that fallibility of emotional and logical perspective. This can distort all perceived and felt reality to a great degree, because all of it is dependent on categories that are not measurable. The subjective position of the manager and the subjective position of the subordinate are therefore extremely variable and complex. This misdirects a correct representation and cannot keep a track of a continually changing aspect of supervisor and subordinate dynamics behavior, which, even with exhaustive results cannot be fully predictable in nature. Perspective is highly induced by the person and his/her personal, social, biographical, physical and historical upbringing and so many other complex classifications that influence the being into thinking what he/she does. Hence, perspectives remain almost unchangeable except for such powerful catalysts like positive encouragement and influences that help subordinates respond to such positive external parameters, like, effective leadership. However, all these speculations are valuable only when one accepts another constant factor while persuading employees to adopt a manager’s vision, which is representative of that of the organizations’. While certain set of skills and practices may be implemented to achieve mutual understanding, an organization must also ensure that the manager is always an effective leader, having the organization’s mission in mind and is not led by personal sense of revenge, ambition or other motive, harmful for both the organization and its faithful employees. 4.1 Managerial Problems with Employee Perception and Globalization Richard Daft7 again sees organizational and managerial problems from a globalised perspective where managers and workers come from various cultural backgrounds. The rise of an emerging managerial philosophy of efficiency are reflected in their various means and mechanisms of professional communication with their staffs that serve as conceived and effective ways of managerial coordination and control thereby giving rise to an atmosphere of accountability to his/her subordinates. The managers also remain accountable to the subordinates about his actions and a general milieu of camaraderie is extended between manager and subordinate so as to make situations much more moldable. These managerial philosophies create a need to constantly demonstrate their competence (as one of the greatest show of accountability that he deserves his post as the manager and thus can guide the others), and approachability. A manager is always meant to be led by compliance to the company or organization benefit and never complain or make his disquietude show in front of his staff that would give any negative impression about the company. Supervisors must also reflect the organizations or the firm’s goal and his perspectives must also improve on all these visions through the continual stress on a democratic good practice, thereby winning employee approval (since it sanctions their individual well too). To understand the element of daily organizational life, internal audits must be performed that can help grasp the chemistry between manager vs. subordinate perspectives. Such internal audits are not essentially financial but which can help guide managerial performance improvement on the grounds of control and coordination through constant revision, development and growth. 5.0 Perception Problem and Further Suggestion Perception problems ranging from autocratic (supervisor retains all decision-making power) to participative (supervisor shares power with subordinates and permits them to influence decisions) is more effective when the later mode of participative leadership is engaged by managers. For (Vroom, 1976)8 participative managerialship also has its attendant problems. First, the concept of participation may have many levels and degree of participation in it. Therefore, since such manager’s cannot always account for the degree of participation that are involved in helping them to mould the perspectives of their employees, their rate of success cannot be always understood with straightforward deductions. Participative decision-making while being an effective tool in the leadership process of guiding employees effectively is less effective in reflecting the frequency or ease of change in perspective within measurable parameters. When, managers are given the authority to make a decision, that is not always open to accountability, the decision should be kept keeping employee and organizational welfare in mind or at least employees must be given that assurance of it, even when the knowledge is not relayed. Subordinates must be encouraged to discuss and draw their own perspectives on various past decisions that have been implemented, both for research purpose and to analyze subordinates' characteristics (values, attitudes, needs). Vroom & Yetton (1973) developed a normative model of leadership decision-making based on Maier's (1963) explicatory theory on further classification of leadership roles, which can be applicable for the manager and subordinate perspective amalgamation issues9. The Vroom-Yetton model concerns those parameters about subordinate participation. It states the importance in understanding the nature of decisions that subordinates make when participation is successful, helps reduce their internal clashing perspectives about managers that act within them and thereby reduces their quality work output. A good manager helps employees come up with those very perspectives that originally s/he would have liked them to posses, but with good leadership and decision making process s/he makes them believe that those decisions are their original ideas itself. 5.1 Struggle with Self and Ideology: Reconstruction In this way, the work of supervisors and even senior managers within the corporate world when they engage in decision-making and analysis of management information always involves a continuous (and often ingenious) struggle with their minds and ideology. Managers and subordinates thus continuously reconstruct themselves, which the manager must always point out to his/her subordinates. 5.1.2 How Power Affects Reconstruction “Ideal” managerial behavior can come from an individual, a collective group of supervisors, or even from followers who often endow the supervisor with status or prestige. Thus managers must be open to such possibility and try and assimilate them and not get hindered by such poerspectives like “I am always right, since I make the decisions around here”. Organizations run on power, by power and with power. Managers are not exempt from using their power, infact without the use of power they will become quite ineffective in achieveing their organizational goals. However, subordinates must be made to understand (by the managers constant practices) that his/her use of power to control (as different to democratic rights as citizens of a country) is the only basis for effective work output. Reconstruction of the whole unit of manager and his/her subordinate is only another positive effects of power that respects each others personal perspectives, while appealing to those that are only beneficial for the company and does not affect the person’s overall persona (like creating greater motivation and not making a subordinate more servile etc). 5.2 Unsuccessful Reconstruction and Consequences Crino and Leap (1989)10 suggested that any discontent with management may also leads to reduced loyalty and a constant presence of an oppositional perspective that can amount to acts of sabotage also. Again, Raven11 explains that managers must not act too harshly out of power and increase their surveillance of subordinate behavior and give way to monitoring his/her subordinates’ every move. When subordinates work out of fear of being monitored or reprimanded (as opposed to induced feeling of motivation and the feeling of performing well out of internal causation), only amplify the feeling of suppression and thereby give way to revolt within the powerless employees of an organization. On the other hand, internalization of the managers’ vision help subordinates take initiatives, be creative by themselves and makes each one responsible towards their work. Thus, by helping subordinates to take ownership of their work and strive for continuous improvement through managers’ inspiration and appreciation can motivate subordinates to go beyond their conflicting perspective of the manager’s role and vision. Constant supervision may help subordinates build up protective emotions that hinder their empathy with manager’s universal organizational perspective. Since supervisors’ behaviors are interpreted to be representative of the organization’s actions, the policies, and procedures undertaken by them become crucial images of the organization itself and helps in structuring employee performance perspectives. 6.0 Conclusion A sign of a healthy and productive organization is a meeting point between managers’s perspectives and the conforming yet independent behavior of his/her subordinates, who are in a position to maintain their own values and yet empathise their managers perspective with respectand ample trust. Managerial leadership within organizations attempt at bridging the gulf between employee and management perspective through their voice and actions. Managers monitor effective formulation of organisational strategy thereby helping to constantly definine a clear and compelling vision within the employees’ mind to bide by organization’s vision as if it were their own. This may also help in implementing change at a organisational or people-oriented level that make this whole dynamic evoving and staying functional through practical impacts. Works Cited 1. Carlyle, Thomas. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1966. 2. Conger, J. & Kanungo, R. (1988). The empowerment process: Integrating theory and practice. The Academy of Management Review. 13,471-482. 3. Crino, M., & Leap, T. (1989). What HR managers must know about employee sabotage. Personnel, 66, 31-38. 4. Crouch, A. & Yetton, P. (1988). Manager-subordinate dyads: Relationships among task and social contact, manager friendliness and subordinate performance in management groups. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Making. 41, 65-82. 5. Daft, R. and Weck, K. Toward A Model Of Organizations As Interpretation Systems, Academy of Management Review, (1984): Vol. 9 No.2, 284-95. 6. House, R.J, Podsakoff (1994), "Leadership effectiveness: past perspectives and future directions for research", in Greenberg, J. (Eds), Organizational Behavior: The State of the Science, Laurence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey, pp.45-82. 7. Maier, N. R. F. (1963). Problem Solving Discussion and Conferences: Leadership Methods and Skills. New York: McGraw-Hill. 8. Quine, L. (1999). Workplace bullying in an NHS community trust: Staff questionnaire survey, British Medical Journal, 318, 228-232. 9. Raven, B. H. (1992). A power/interaction model of interpersonal influence: French and Raven thirty years later. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 7(2), 217-244. 10. Vroom, V. H. (1976). Leadership. In M. D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, pp. 1527-1551. Chicago; Rand McNally. 1. Read More