Managerial Decision Making About Employee Discipline: A Policy‐capturing Approach

Abstract

This study examined how personnel managers (n, = 19) and line managers ( n = 28) make disciplinary decisions. Using a policy-capturing approach, subjects were asked to respond to disciplinary incidents that varied in terms of three factors likely to affect managerial attributions about the cause of the disciplinary problem (managerial provocation, personal problems, or tenure). The incidents also varied in terms of factors made relevant by the economic, institutional/legal, and hierarchical contexts. Of the six variables manipulated, the factor relating to the institutional/legal context had the largest impact on the decisions made by the personnel managers, and the factor relating to the hierarchical context had the largest impact on the decisions made by the line managers. While provocation was relatively important for both line and personnel managers, personal problems, tenure, and the economic implications of the decision had more modest impacts on managerial decisions. The results also suggest that there is substantial variation across managers in terms of the decision rules employed when responding to disciplinary cases.Much of existing research about how managers make disciplinary decisions uses an attribution theory framework (Jones & Davis, 1965). Consistent with attribution theory, research suggests that managers attempt to determine the cause of a behavioral problem in deciding how to respond to that problem. For example, studies show that as the consistency of a performance problem increases, so too does the likelihood of the subject making an internal attribution (attributing the cause of the problem to the employee) and, in turn, the likelihood of a harsh response (Mitchell & Wood, 1979). Similarly, when subjects believed that the reason for the performance problem was a lack of effort or ability, more severe action was taken than if the problem was attributed to task difficulty or bad luck (Pence, Pendleton, Dobbins, & Sgro, 1982). Findings that organizational status and family problems affect discipline (Rosen & Jerdee, 1974) also suggest that disciplinary decisions may be ~ Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Brian S. Klaas, College of Business Administration, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208. COPYRICiHT 0 IWO PERSOKNEL PSYCHOLOGY. INC

When We Don’t See Eye to Eye: Discrepancies between Supervisors and Subordinates in Absence Disciplinary Decisions

“…As noted earlier, whereas Klaas and Wheeler (1990) found employee criticality to be an important influence on disciplinary decisions related to employee insubordination, we found this factor to be a relatively trivial influence on absence disciplinary decisions. Furthermore, the effects found in this study for discrepancies in psychological and demographic attributes also may not apply to other types of violations.…”

“…However, the fact that the absentee's criticality to the department was not a significant factor for any of the supervisors is unexpected in light of recent research which found that employee criticality had a significant impact on both line managers' and personnel managers' disciplinary decisions (Klaas & Wheeler, 1990). In the Klaas and Wheeler study, managers were responding to scenarios that depicted employee insubordination whereas employee absenteeism was the focus of this study.…”

“…Klaas and Wheeler (1990) have argued that line managers, through their discretion over the severity of a disciplinary sanction, influence the allocation of human resources to various factors of production. Specifically, where demand for labor is inelastic, they maintained that the cost of disciplinary action is likely to increase as the severity of the action increases.…”

“…Furthermore, it is important that supervisors and their subordinates see eye to eye on what is acceptable discipline in response to an employee transgression for particular circumstances. To date, scholars have studied the decision making processes managers and supervisors engage in when responding to employee insubordination (Klaas & Wheeler, 1990), substance abuse violations (Klaas & Dell'Omo, 1991), and employee absenteeism (Martocchio, 1992a). While these researchers investigated supervisor decision making consistency, there has not been any research that compares the decision making processes of supervisors and their subordinates regarding acceptable absence disciplinary responses.…”

A Policy-Capturing Approach to Individuals′ Decisions to Be Absent

“…As stated previously, the within-subjects design permits researchers to infer the relative importance of particular factors that are related to an individual's decision making. When the research question is focused on decision making, this design is known as policy capturing and has been widely used in the study of decision making processes within the organizational context (e.g., Klaas & Wheeler, 1990;Sanchez & Levine, 1989). …”