Resistance to Deficient Organizational Authority: The Impact of Culture and Connectedness in the Workplace

Abstract

In 2 countries differing on individualistic–collectivistic orientation, we investigated resistance to a request made by a manager perceived as lacking personal power based on a key attribute (e.g., expertise, relationality). Results of an experiment with Polish and American participants were consistent with cultural differences in the preferred attribute of leaders in the 2 nations. Participants were more resistant to a manager who lacked the attribute more valued in their culture: Americans were more resistant to managers perceived as lacking in expertise, whereas Poles were more resistant to managers perceived as lacking in relational skills. This effect occurred only under conditions of well‐established workplace relationships, suggesting that group connectedness creates a tendency to behave in line with predominant cultural norms.

Cultural determinants of status: Implications for workplace evaluations and behaviors

“…Americans to comply with a request from a leader who lacked relational skills (Wosinska, et al, 2009; see Leslie & Gelfand, 2011 for a reiew of simlar findings). The authors suggest that this finding may be attributable to differences in individualism and collectivism, but do not provide direct evidence for this assertion.…”

Examining the mediating effect of supervisor conflict on procedural injustice–job strain relations: The function of power distance.

“…Supervisor conflict is a value-sensitive behavior (Wosinska et al, 2009). An important cultural value that may influence employees' relationship with their supervisors is power distance.…”

Deconstructing NPM: Public Service Values in a Global Public Administration

“…Ethical multiplicity occurs wherein internally stable yet approximal moral frameworks precipitated by environmental signals result in an affray between employees' personal and professional lives, which leads in turn to feelings of disassociation, uncoupling, disaffection, and divarication (cf., Jurkiewicz 2002bJurkiewicz , 2013Jurkiewicz and Nichols 2002). Wosinska et al (2009) have provided additional evidence in support of the concept of ethical multiplicity, substantiating that the majority of individuals switch from one internally consistent ethical framework to another reflective of variations in social influence, such as the workplace, at home or, say, at a bachelor's party. For many, organizational life requires a mediation of ethical multiplicative events, and as NPM was integrated into the public sector, this imparity between the values held as sacrosanct and the reality of what is condoned as preferable behavior caused the unveiling of the Phantom Code of Ethics (Jurkiewicz and Thompson 1999;Jurkiewicz 2002b), which in this instance is the model of traditional public service values.…”