How willing are subordinates to comply with their supervisor? A Social Dominance Theory study of power tactics in work organizations

Social Dominance Theory (SDT) posits that high-power groups often push to maintain their dominant position and that low-power groups sometimes act in self-debilitating ways, and these complementary actions contribute to the same result: the maintenance of stable group hierarchies. We incorporated the Interpersonal Power Interaction Model (IPIM; Raven 1965) to test whether such co-ordination occurs when employees with subordinate positions acquiesce to their supervisors’ use of harsh, coercive interpersonal power tactics. One aspect of this intergroup coordination that may seem contrary to SDT is that members of low-power groups are usually lower on social dominance orientation (SDO) than members of high-power groups, and as such, low-power groups oppose hierarchy-enhancing practices (e.g., Lee, Pratto & Johnson, 2011). For this reason, we predicted that the degree of fit between supervisors’ use of harsh tactics and their subordinates’ acceptance of those tactics would depend on the subordinates’ level of SDO.