Traditional Wisdom... LO9101

Yogesh Malhotra (MALHOTRA@vms.cis.pitt.edu)
Wed, 14 Aug 1996 04:39:25 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO9007 --

On 09 Aug 96, Dale Emery wrote in L09007:

> "The lesson taken from this is that people will comply with
>requirements that they would otherwise not do, simply because someone with
>assumed authority asked (told) theym to do so."
>
>Anybody have any ideas about how we choose who we will consider to be an
>authority?

How one *chooses* anyone to be an authority depends upon the 'construal'
of that specific individual. Here, construal denotes making sense of a
specific 'authority' situation w.r.t. one's existing system of constructs.
[Constructs are analogous to extant schemas that a person applies to the
understanding of a new situation.] More details on this issue are
available in George Kelly's work on Personal Construct Psychology and tons
of articles that cite his work in the domains of psychiatry, educational
psychology, expert systems, marketing, etc.

The issue of control seems relevant in this context of compliance based on
'authority'. Specifically, even in an 'authority' situation, the notion of
one-sided 'influence' is questionable based on the following arguments.

Sloan School's Orlikowski has observed that: "Discussions of
organizational control often tend to downplay the extent to which
individuals retain the potential to act to change a particular situation
or form of control."

She invokes Giddens' *dialectic of control*: "All forms of dependence
offer some resources whereby those who are subordinate can influence the
activities of their superiors."

Her observation is in line with Manz et al. (1987) who have argued that:
"Persons may exercise self-control even when they choose to acquiesce to
external demands, as acquiescence still implies choice... [and]... in the
final analysis control is self-imposed."

Self-control is based on the premise that control can be exercised only
through intrinsic individual motivation and the role of external
influences is to facilitate the creation of appropriate self-controls
(Manz & Sims).

Our recent field study (Malhotra & Kirsch) has attempted to explain how
personal construction is relevant to understanding the 'construal' of
externally 'imposed' controls into self-controls at the individual level
of controllees.

These notions are also relevant to the concepts of organizational learning
and training. One can drag a horse to a water spigot, however one cannot
force it to drink. Similarly, one can 'impose' training on the individual
employees, however it may not necessarily translate into learning unless
the individuals have intrinsic motivation to learn.

For further reading:

Manz, C.C. & Sims, H.P. SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead
Themselves, Prentice-Hall, Berkeley, CA, 1989.

Manz, C.C., Mossholder, K. W. & Luthans, F. "An Integrated Perspective of
Self-Control in Organizations," 19(1), Administration & Society, May 1987,
pp. 3-24.

Orlikowski, W. J. "Integrated Information Environment or Matrix of
Control?: The Contradictory Implications of Information Technology,"
Accounting, Management and Information Technology, 1(1), 1991b, pp. 9-42.

Giddens, A. "The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of
structure, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984.

Kelly, G.A. The Psychology of Personal Constructs, vols 1 & 2, W.W. Norton
& Co., New York, NY, 1955.

Kelly, G.A. A Theory of Personality: The Psychology of Personal
Constructs, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, NY, 1963.

Malhotra, Y. & Kirsch, L. "Personal Construct Analysis of Self-Control in
IS Adoption: Empirical Evidence from Comparative Case Studies of IS Users
& IS Champions," Proceedings of the INFORMS Conference on Information
Systems and Technology (Organizational Adoption and Learning Papers),
Washington D.C., 1996, pp. 105-114.

Sincerely,

Yogesh Malhotra, A Business Researcher's Interests
malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu , http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/interest.html

-- 

Yogesh Malhotra <MALHOTRA@vms.cis.pitt.edu>

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