Physician-Executives Use of Strategies: Gaining Compliance From Superiors Who Communicate in Attractive and Unattractive Styles

Abstract

Little is known about the way physicians function as managers in influence situations. In an effort to fill this gap in the literature and to illuminate how a target's communicator style affects agents' strategic decisions, this study examined 222 physician-executives' choices of influence strategies when seeking to gain compliance from superiors who communicate with them in attractive and unattractive styles. The findings show that physician-executives are (a) significantly more likely to reason with a superior who communicates in an attractive style; (b) equally likely to be friendly with a superior who communicates in either an attractive or an unattractive style; and (c) significantly more likely to use the strategies of assertiveness, bargaining, coalition, and higher authority when influencing a superior who communicates in an unattractive rather than an attractive style.