Perceived Lack of Respect Seen as Cause of Employee Defiance

Employees have a “psychological contract” with their employers that, if broken, could turn some to violence, an authority warned.

A psychological contract doesn’t carry the force of law with the employee, but it is just as binding. It’s the employee’s belief in a set of reciprocal obligations, said Judi McLean Parks, professor of organizational behavior at Washington University’s Olin School of Business.

Such a contract exists when a worker feels, for example, “I thought it was for real when you promised me merit pay! I worked weekends!”

However, it may bear no resemblance whatsoever to a legal contract or to what the company is trying to communicate, McLean Parks said.

In recent years, McLean Parks has studied hundreds of cases of retribution and revenge by employees against their organizations. One of her conclusions is that society has a “predisposition to think that all acts of employee retribution are bad,” although this is not necessarily true.

“The small acts of defiance--the receptionist who is rude to a customer, taking five minutes extra on coffee break, bad-mouthing the boss--these can have a cathartic effect for the employee and a signaling effect for the company that it needs to take some action,” she said.

McLean Parks said employees “don’t usually behave in a vacuum. There’s often a reason for them to behave as they do.” Those who retaliate violently may lack self-control and feel they have not been treated with dignity and respect.

Generally, McLean Parks said, employees who feel they have been wronged at work put the injustice into three categories:

* Distributive: Is my outcome fair? Did I get what I deserve? Instances include getting a raise or being targeted for a layoff.

* Procedural: Was the process by which the outcome was determined considered fair?

* Interactional: Was I treated with dignity and respect?

“Most employees can deal with distributive injustice,” McLean Parks said, even though “they may not like the fact that ‘I don’t get paid as much as I should.’ ”

“But the combination of distributive injustice and procedural injustice is hard to take,” she said. “When we didn’t get the outcome we wanted and decided the process wasn’t fair, that’s when we get hot under the collar. And to add insult to injury, we may not have been treated with respect.”

“You can’t really know who is going to flip their wigs, but if you’ve made sure it’s a fair and just environment, at least you can minimize violence,” she said.

McLean Parks advised:

* Employers should be alert to any increase in pilferage and absenteeism or “general evidence that people are unhappy” and to conduct employee surveys on a regular basis.

* Employers should give more positive feedback to their employees, because “when organizations give feedback, usually it’s negative.”

* Employers should heed workers’ desires for dignity and respect.

“When you look at what employees say they want--money is just a part of it--the thing that comes up time and time again is ‘I want to be respected,’ ” McLean Parks said.

“If somebody damages your identity, whether to yourself or to your public, that’s a damage that’s really hard to rectify, and people take it personally”--sometimes with tragic results.