Shirking or scorning? Why consensus leads to lower support for unfavorable organizational decisions - 12 Jan 2022
The research seminar was a joint initiative of the House of Innovation and the Department of Management and Organization.
You can see below the title and abstract of the paper.
Title: Shirking or Scorning? Why Consensus Leads to Lower Support for Unfavorable Organizational Decisions
Abstract: We hypothesize that the use of consensus-based decision-making process, by the organizational decision-making body, i.e., the dominant coalition, is more likely to elicit members’ support for unfavorable decisions than when the organization uses voting. We argue that consensus-based decision-making is viewed as more procedurally just than voting, hence result in greater support. In an experimental study (Study 1) we found that members of organizations that engaged in consensus displayed less support for the unfavorable decision than members in organizations that engaged in voting, despite stronger perceptions of procedural justice in the former. We checked if the pattern of the results in the laboratory study run in the field as well. We used a correlational archival study (Study 2) that shows consensus-based governance systems to be negatively correlated with citizens’ self-reported support for COVID-19 public safety measures, even while such a system is positively related to a measure of procedural justice. We develop two explanations for the contrary finding: the leaders representing members in the dominant coalition did not present enough arguments (shirked), or the dominant coalition ignored the leader’s arguments (scorned), to explain why consensus-based structures lead to lower levels of members’ support for unfavorable outcomes. We test the two explanations in an experimental study (Study 3) and find that when the member’s leaders are ignored (scorned), it leads to lower support. We discuss the implications for literatures on organizational design, procedural and distributive justice, and practice.
