Predictors of Employee Resistance to Supervisors' Requests

Abstract

There have been few studies of either noncompliance with, or complaints about, supervisory requests. Consequently, little is known about the personality and attitude variables related to complying or complaining. The authors examined this issue among 306 part-time employees from a wide variety of organizations in the United States. They completed Hong's Psychological Reactance Scale (S.-M. Hong, 1992, 1994; S.-M. Hong & S. Page, 1989), Personnel Decisions, Inc. (PDI) Employment Inventory (1986, 1993), J. R. Hackman and G. R. Oldham's (1980) Job Satisfaction Questionnaire, and a questionnaire developed for this study to measure compliance and complaint. Scale scores for PDI performance, gender, scale scores for satisfaction with coworkers, and scale scores for satisfaction with supervisors were the best predictors of self-reports of compliance with supervisory requests. The score for trait reactance was the best predictor of self-reports of complaints about supervisory requests. Job satisfaction was related to compliance but not to complaint. The results of the study suggest that determinants for noncompliance may be different from those for complaints.