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In this study, the construct validity and effectiveness of a newly identified influence tactic, organizational appeal, is tested. Utilizing a sample of practicing professional accountants, study results show that organizational appeal is distinct from other influence tactics, is perceived to be used frequently by supervisors, and is effective at influencing subordinates. The organizational appeal influence tactic could be particularly useful in situations where accounting supervisors and managers use proactive tactics to influence others to complete tasks or make decisions; to influence outsiders (e.g., suppliers, clients, government agents) over whom they have little authority; and where other influence tactics are not effective or appropriate.

The authors examine the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) and the selection of upward influence tactics. The purpose of this paper is to integrate research on perceptions of justice, LMX, and influence tactics in order to empirically test an integrative model.

Questionnaires were administered to n=407 employed Masters of Business Administration students at a private Southeastern University in the USA. Structural equation modeling was used to test the statistical significance of paths specified in the models.

Results indicate that perceptions of organizational justice have indirect effects on upward influence tactics reported. LMX had mediating effects on the relationship between interactional justice and the use of rational and coalition tactics.

The data are cross-sectional and were collected using self-reports, which limits the conclusions that can be drawn. The findings however, suggest that perceptions of interactional justice are associated with LMX, whose effects in turn are associated with the use of influence tactics.

Coalition strategies were used more when subordinates experienced poor LMX. The research suggests that perhaps for individuals experiencing poor relationships with the supervisor, coalition strategies might present an alternative to “rational” influence tactics (which are used more in high-quality relationships).

The current study extends LMX research by examining differing subordinate influence strategies in high- and low-quality relationships. It also extends organizational justice research by examining the effects of the interpersonal implementation of fair procedures on the dynamics between leadership and upward influence.

This study seeks to demonstrate that employees' reactions to their supervisors' influence behaviors are governed by meanings inferred from the behaviors. Another aim is to develop a method in which “weights” for predicting employees' reactions are assigned using mean ratings of perceptions of the features and social/organizational implications of the influence behaviors.

Employees of an energy utility completed survey questionnaires concerning the extent of their supervisors' use of specified influence tactics. Employees' organizational commitment, supervisor commitment, turnover intention, and stress also were surveyed. A separate, community sample rated the influence tactics for dimensions of meaning or implications of the tactics. Data from the two samples were combined in a novel arithmetic scoring procedure as one of several analyses looking for evidence of the specified dimensions' effects.

The study finds that employees' work attitudes and other outcomes were predicted to a statistically significant degree by dimensional, perceptual characterizations of the influence tactics used by their supervisors. In culminating multiple regression analyses, respectfulness was associated with supervisor commitment, turnover intention, and emotional distress; directness was associated with organizational commitment. Additional analyses indicated that other dimensions of meaning also were associated with outcomes.

The meanings of supervisors' influence behaviors are somewhat culture‐specific, so the generalizability of findings to other cultures is uncertain. However, the central role of social inferences in reactions to supervisors' influence behaviors may be replicable to other cultures if culture‐specific content or ratings are substituted there. This research also has the usual limitations of cross‐sectional, correlational research.

In their interactions with employees, managers and supervisors should be aware that their influence behaviors, collectively, generate reactions that are significant for employees' motivation and well‐being. Supervisory behaviors and work contexts should be managed so that employees will infer that their supervisors are showing respect and are being honest and direct.

Processes previously assumed to intervene between supervisory influence behavior and employee reactions were operationalized and demonstrated. Novel methods were developed for this research, and these methods may also be applicable to other research domains that involve sets of behaviors that parallel existing schemes for influence behavior.

Interest in the nature of influence attempts in the performance evaluation process has increased in recent years. Researchers have conducted a number of important and revealing cross‐sectional investigations, but there remains virtually no longitudinal work in this area. The present study attempted to address this need by conducting a multi‐period investigation of influence tactics use and affect that addressed three questions: (1) Are individuals consistent in their use of influence tactics across evaluation periods? (2) Are prior‐period performance ratings reflected in subsequent influence tactic use? (3) What role does affect, both supervisor and subordinate, play in this process? A latent variable structural model was tested using longitudinal data from managers and employees of food services units. Our results indicated that there is a cycle of continued influence tactic use across time periods, performance ratings help to determine subsequent tactic use, and both supervisor and subordinate affect play a role in the influence‐evaluation process. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

Full-range leadership theory and power-and-influence approaches to leadership emerge from different theoretical traditions, but may overlap conceptually and practically. Previous research has found connections between full-range leadership styles and leaders’ influencing behaviors. However, this research has been conceptually and methodologically limited, neither examining all full-range leadership styles nor all common influence tactics, and measuring only employees’ perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to address these limitations.

Follower-rated leadership styles and influence tactics, and leader-rated leadership styles were surveyed for 160 pairs of leaders and followers (n=320).

Core influence tactics and apprising were correlated with, and predicted, follower-rated transformational and transactional leadership, but confirmatory factor analysis provided a more nuanced view of these relationships. Rational persuasion (negatively) predicted passive-avoidant leadership. There were few significant correlations between leader-self-rated leadership styles and followers’ ratings of leaders’ influence tactics.

This study extends upon previous studies by more comprehensively connecting full-range leadership styles and influence tactics, and doing so with both leader-rated and follower-rated leadership styles. The results help to provide a clearer picture of the overlap between full-range and power-and-influence theories of leadership. The mismatches between results from leader-rated and follower-rated leadership styles raise conceptual, practical, and methodological questions for future research.

Although prior research has found that employee participation is key to successfully implementing quality management initiatives (Baird et al., 2011; de Menezes, 2012; Lagrosen and Lagrosen, 2005), little research in operations management exists that investigates which management actions and behaviors lead to employee commitment to such initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in the operations management literature by investigating which influence tactics are the most effective in soliciting employee commitment to continuous improvement tasks. The paper also examines how influence tactics affect the supervisor-subordinate relationship and the manager’s effectiveness in implementing continuous improvement initiatives.

A survey instrument was used to measure supervisor-subordinate relationship quality, usage of influence behaviors and participants’ task commitment to continuous improvement initiatives.

The results indicate that five of the 11 influence tactics identified in the prior literature, i.e., collaboration, consultation, ingratiation, inspirational appeals, and rational persuasion, are significant and strong predictors of employee commitment to continuous improvement initiatives. Further, analyses show that these influence tactics are significant drivers of the quality of the supervisor-subordinate relationship, which was found to partially mediate the relationship between influence tactics and the supervisor’s effectiveness in implementing continuous improvement projects.

Since the extant CI and Total Quality Management literature has looked at the plant or program level rather than the worker-level as in the research, the findings offer one explanation as to why earlier studies investigating the relationship between quality management programs and increased organizational performance reported mixed results.

Increasing managers’ awareness and usage of influence tactics may increase the success rate of continuous improvement projects as well the quality of the relationship with the manager’s subordinates.

While the extant literature has argued that management support and employee commitment are key components of a continuous improvement project implementation, little has been written about the specific management actions and behaviors that lead to success.

Principals are considered central in initiating and mobilizing changes in schools; however, their political behaviors in the course of school changes are underexplored. The present research investigated the influence tactics used by school principals to induce teachers to join a process of second-order (deep and wide) change in the school teaching and culture. In specific, the authors were interested to know which influence tactics, principals and staff members considered to be efficient during such a second-order change process.

The study was based on a case study method focusing on four Israeli Jewish state public religious schools participating in the “Routes” program aimed at strengthening religious values in schools. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with principals, teachers with program coordinators responsibilities and teachers in four schools.

The results indicate that school principals who are considered successful in leading changes display two key influence prototypes: a hybrid type that combines soft and hard influence tactics and a unitype that relies on soft influence tactics.

The research study contributed to the limited knowledge in educational administration on micropolitics and political behaviors in the course of school changes.

Executive coaching is commonly utilized in organizations to facilitate the personal and professional growth of executives. Executive coaches utilize a variety of proactive influence tactics to create behavioral change in their clients. The current study aimed to examine coaches' perceived use and effectiveness of the outcome, timing, and objective of proactive influence tactics in coaching relationships.

Members of ten organizations affiliated with executive coaching were targeted for participation. A total of 110 participants completed the online survey.

Influence tactics including coalition, consultation, inspirational appeals, and rational persuasion were more frequently associated with client commitment. Consultation was more frequently utilized during initial influence attempts; pressure was more frequently utilized during follow‐up attempts. Coaches also reported using different tactics depending on the desired outcome of the influence attempt: coalition and pressure were utilized to change behavior, whereas coaches used consultation and rational persuasion to both change behavior and assign work.

The results offer insights into executive coaching engagements, areas for potential training and development of practicing coaches, and techniques for creating more successful outcomes with coaching clients. The findings are limited by sample size, self‐report measures, and the lack of contextual or organizational information. Future research should expand these findings to provide additional information regarding the use of influence tactics in the executive coaching industry.

There is little empirical data regarding how executive coaches effectively influence behavioral change in their clients. The current study applies research on proactive influence tactics to the context of executive coaching, bridging these two previously disparate streams of research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Koslowsky and Schwarzwald’s (2009) recent conceptualization of the interpersonal power interaction model which assumed that the choice of power tactics in conflict situations is a sequential process including antecedents, mediators, and the choice of influence tactics. The mediation process is the new component of the model, thus the authors tested two potential mediators – perceived damage and negative emotions – in the choice process.

Managers (n=240) were presented with conflict scenarios involving one of their subordinates (low/high performing) and differed by conflict type (relations/task and principle/expediency). They indicated the influence tactics they would utilize in the given situation for gaining compliance and completed a series of questionnaires: perceived damage engendered by disobedience, resultant emotion, cognitive closure, and demographics.

Results indicated that perceived damage, directly and through the mediation of resultant negative emotions, influenced the tendency to opt for harsh tactics. This trend was further affected by the managers’ gender and cognitive closure.

The discussion addresses the empirical validity of the model, the role of rationality and emotion in the process of choosing influence tactics. Practical implications concerning the usage of harsh and soft tactics and the limitation of the self-report method were also discussed.

The contribution of the study is twofolded: proving the empirical validity of the new conceptualization of the model and explaining the dynamic involved in the choice of influence tactics.

The main aim of this study is to analyze the perception of influence tactics used by male and female representatives in order to gain the commitment of their constituencies when accounting for the outcomes reached in a collective bargaining round.

An experimental design was used to manipulate agreement – favorable vs unfavorable – using collective bargaining scenarios, and measurements were made of subjects' perceptions of the use of hard and soft influence tactics and constituency commitment. Participants stated which influence tactics they would use to inform their constituents about a positive or negative agreement, and the level of commitment they would expect from their constituency.

Results show that hard tactics are perceived as being more effective than soft tactics for enhancing constituency commitment to unfavorable results. Women perceive that they use more soft tactics than men to announce unfavorable agreements, while men perceive that they use more soft tactics than women to announce favorable agreements between parties. Overall, the perception of influence exercised over the constituency is strongly affected by gender, along the lines that men tend to explain and justify their successes and not their failures, while women tend to justify their failures and not their successes.

As the evidence in this study came from self‐report measures, future studies should corroborate findings by observing representative behavior.

The findings have important implications for training programs of representatives in collective bargaining, particularly in the exercise of influence at the second negotiation round.

The paper demonstrates that gender is an important moderator in representative‐constituency negotiation.