“But That’s Not My Job”: Employee Resistance to Extra-Role Tasks

ABSTRACT

Supervisors sometimes assign employees extra-role tasks, which are often perceived as unreasonable and can prompt employee resistance. In an experiment, we investigated employees’ likelihood of declining an extra-role task (ERT) and the message characteristics associated with resistance. Results indicate that the more unreasonable employees perceived an ERT, the more likely they were to decline it. Employees were more likely to use polite strategies to resist an ERT when the assignment was communicated as a request and included explanation, appreciation, and acknowledgment. They were more likely to use impolite strategies when the ERT was assigned with messages that lacked those characteristics. These findings indicate how employees communicatively resist an ERT depends, in part, on how the ERT assignment is communicated by their supervisor.

KEYWORDS:

• Extra-role tasks
• resistance
• politeness theory
• employer-employee
• leader-member exchange theory
• supervisor-subordinate communication

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Supplementary items including the extra-role task condition prompts are available at https://osf.io/n35uf.

2. A dichotomous LMX score was created for use in this ANOVA by calculating the median LMX score (22) and coding LMX scores less than 22 as “low LMX” and scores 22 or higher as “high LMX.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kaylin L. Duncan

Kaylin L. Duncan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona.

Patricia M. Sias

Dr. Patricia M. Sias is a Professor Emerita of Communication at the University of Arizona.

Yejin Shin

Yejin Shin is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona.