Successfully Managing Employees

by Vincent J. Natoli, Jr.

Organizations face environments of rapid change, economic uncertainty and increasing competition, making it difficult for organizations to survive and prosper, so managers are challenged to find ways to make their organizations prosper. A major way, and possibly the only sustainable way, for organizations to gain a competitive advantage is by efficiently managing their employees. The efficient management of the workforce results in ideas engendering revenue growth and cost reduction. Understanding how to efficiently manage employees, requires understanding how organizations generally deal with their employees and how employees react; a process I call employee survival. Employee survival is the employment equivalent of life and death in a biological system.

Authoritarianism Theory

To understand employee survival, it is first necessary to understand authoritarianism theory. Authoritarianism consists of 3 attitudinal clusters: aggression, submission and conventionalism. An organization that is high on these 3 attitudinal clusters is high on authoritarianism and one that is low, is low on authoritarianism. Authoritarians are more likely than non-authoritarians to use punishment to control others and the targets of their punishment tend to be out-group members. Authoritarian punishment is triggered by feelings of self-righteousness and perceptions of the world as a dangerous place. High authoritarians are more likely than low authoritarians to submit to the conventions of authority figures. The process of employee survival is based on an authoritarianism congruence between the employer and employee.

Employee Survival

The Theory of Employee Survival states the process of employee survival begins in the recruitment process where the employer and applicant bring their authoritarian attitudes to the labor market. The parties initially are attracted to each other for general and scant reasons. The parties initial probing of each other begins the process of authoritarianism congruence and an employer who feels the applicant will not submit to his conventions will aggress against the applicant by not inviting the applicant for further assessment. The applicant, similarly, will withdraw from the hiring process if he is unwilling to submit to the employer’s conventions.

The selection process begins after the parties finish the recruitment stage and a deeper probing of the authoritarianism fit occurs. The employer’s authoritarianism is affected by its human resource practices, and by the relevant decision-maker’s authoritarianism and his feelings of self-righteousness and perceptions of the world as a dangerous place leading to aggression against the incongruent applicant by refusing to hire the applicant. The applicant, similarly, will withdraw from the process if he is not comfortable with the fit. An employer’s authoritarian attitudes change over time as they are affected by the myriad factors affecting organizations such as economic, political, technical and cultural factors. An employee’s authoritarian attitudes, similarly, also change over time. While the employer’s purported economic purpose is to select the best applicant for the job, i.e., the applicant who will provide the employer with the highest economic return, this often is not done. The performance validities of employee selection methods imply that the employer does not hire the applicant who will provide the highest economic return. The performance validities of the following selection methods generally range from low to high: unstructured interviews, references, personality tests, work samples, ability tests and structured interviews. The unstructured interview, which probably is the most prevalent employee selection method, has the lowest validity. The structured interview, which removes much of the interviewer’s discretion in the process, has the highest validity. The selection validities show that as the hiring authority’s discretion in the selection process decreases, the quality of the hiring decision increases. This implies that the hiring authority is actually assessing the applicant for authoritarianism fit and not job performance. The selection process ends with a higher authoritarianism congruence between the parties than there was in the beginning.

After the applicant is hired, he is given a number of formal socialization processes to encourage him to comply with the employer’s conventionalism. Socialization further tests the authoritarianism congruence between the employer and employee. Some employees willingly submit to the employer’s conventions and continue their employment with a high level of job motivation and organizational commitment. Some employees refuse to submit and quit or face aggression in the form of a discharge. Other employees unwillingly submit and continue their employment with reduced motivation and commitment.

As the employee continues his employment, a workplace conflict eventually arises which tests the employee’s submission to the employer’s conventions. The employee, once again, must decide to willingly submit, refuse to submit or unwillingly submit. The employees who willingly submit or refuse to submit experience the same results as after socialization. The effects of the conflict on those who unwillingly submit, however, are more complicated and problematic for organizations. Because the unwilling submitter is conflicted by what he wants to do and what the job requires, he enters a state of cognitive dissonance. The cognitive dissonance creates a state of psychological tension for the employee which manifests itself in lower job performance. His job motivation, organizational commitment, productivity, quality, attendance and creativity decline. This employee may also manifest his tension through violence; bullying; or engaging in a formal complaint process such as filing a grievance, lawsuit or government agency complaint, or seeking union representation.

As the unwilling submitter continues his employment and experiences more socialization and conflicts, his cognitive dissonance increases making him more likely to refuse to submit. Employees often deal with this dissonance by masking their disagreement with the organization’s conventions for fear of reprisal by creating facades of conformity, i.e., developing outward appearances of conformity through such behaviors as modeling others, expressing appropriate emotions, wearing proper attire, expressing agreement with the authority’s opinions and acquiescing to bad decisions.

The process of weaning-out those employees who do not fit continues over time generally resulting in employees with high, rather than low, seniority being more likely to fit their organization’s conventions and achieving a greater economic gain.

As an employer’s authoritarianism increases, its conventionalism narrows resulting in more employees refusing to submit and, perhaps worse, unwillingly submit and entering a state of cognitive dissonance. While some authoritarianism is needed to maintain organizational structure and attain organizational goals, too much leads to negative outcomes and poor organizational performance.

Conclusion

The fields of mathematics and economics provide us with models for optimizing decisions. In reality, however, many decisions do not attain optimality. Psychological variables often explain the divergence between optimal and sub-optimal decisions. In the organizational realm, authoritarianism is a major variable leading to sub-optimal decisions. Organizations constantly must navigate the treacherous managerial waters between the Scylla and Charybdis of too much and too little authoritarianism. Too much authoritarianism and the organization becomes sclerotic with too little creativity and productivity, low quality and high turnover. Too little authoritarianism and the organization lacks the structure to complete its objectives which, at the extreme, results in the organizational equivalent of anarchy and chaos. Those organizations which are closest to optimality on authoritarianism will survive and prosper, and those which are the furthest from optimality will not survive.

September 7, 2011