Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/men-megaphone-employees-5794501/

Unfair managerial decisions can be a significant source of discontent among employees. Let us give an illustrative example from the world of football. In the previous season (2022-2023), Leicester City football club was competing in the English Premier League, where they were struggling because of their poor defense. Çağlar Soyuncu, a Turkish international defender who was selected for the 2019-2020 PFA Team of the Year, was not given a chance to play even though fans were calling his name. Brendan Rodgers, who was the club’s manager then, argued that Soyuncu’s performance was not ready for playing based on his training performance. However, after Brendan Rodgers was replaced by Dean Smith for the last few games of the season, Soyuncu was selected to play again. Soyuncu’s performance was so good that he was chosen as the Man of the Match twice.

It turned out that Brendan Rodgers’s explanation for his dismissal of Soyuncu was inauthentic. It was then clear that Soyuncu’s physical fitness had been indeed all right, and he had been ready to play, but Rodgers made an explanation that was strategically formed to give an appearance of legitimacy. This is what we call an eristic legitimation attempt, which is not intended to persuade the affected party but to make that person powerless by the appearance of legitimacy in the eyes of third parties.

Source: https://twitter.com/LCFC1884VERDICT/status/1649869318451077121

Source: https://www.bbc.com/sport/articles/cqv0246y1ego

What Is ‘Eristic’?

According to Oxford Reference, eristic denotes “reasoning that aims not at truth but at victory over an opponent or at making a weaker position prevail’. The term has ancient roots. In Ancient Greece, Sophists were notorious for their eristic arguments that were aimed at winning disputes with a disrespect for truth.

How and Why Eristic Legitimations Happen?

In our study published in the Journal of Management Studies, we explored how and why eristic legitimations occur within the context of fairness disputes between managers and their subordinates over the managerial decision concerning the promotion of the subordinate. For these aims, we interviewed 15 former employees who claimed that they were unfairly passed over for promotion by their former managers (because of ethical concerns, we did not contact employees who currently have such problems). To get a managerial perspective on the topic, we also interviewed 21 HRM-related professionals (human resource managers and directors, employment relationship conciliators, a career coach, an employment lawyer, a corporate executive, and a labor union representative).

            Our analysis reveals that eristic legitimations occur mainly in four ways:

• The managerial explanation denies the reality of the observed case.
• The managerial explanation accepts the observed case but denies its unfairness.
• The managerial explanation agrees with the observed case and its unfairness but denies any personal responsibility.
• There is a lack of managerial explanation to the affected party, forcing submission to the decision by implying its unquestionability.

What Eases or Prevents Eristic Legitimations?

The unaccountability of managers and the level of managerial power ease the possibility of eristic legitimation.  Besides, our analysis crucially demonstrates that eristic legitimations are enabled by ambiguities that managers exploit opportunistically. These are ambiguities concerning:

• the tasks of the employees,
• the performance or competence of the employees,
• the moral standards of the organization,
• the real causes of managerial decisions.  

The interviews suggest that managers are less likely to resort to eristic legitimations when:

• There are disincentives for eristic legitimations or when the manager’s power can be challenged by others
• The manager and the subordinate have a good social relationship.
• The manager is not closed-minded.

Consequences of eristic legitimations

When managers resort to eristic legitimations, there are negative consequences both for the affected employee and the organization. Our analysis suggests that eristic legitimations can lead to a series of political power conflicts within the organization. Besides, eristic legitimations help managers disguise inefficiencies that happen as a result of their controversial decisions. Unless those efficiencies are undisputable, they are not easily identified or exposed by others in the organization because of the eristic legitimations that shadow them. In this process, eristic legitimations destroy meritocracy and foster mediocrity. Eristic legitimation of managers also hurts the career of their subordinates as the subordinates find themselves in an increased ambiguity about their future in the organization. Employees can lose their motivation to work so much that their later actions retrospectively begin to justify the initial controversial managerial decision. In this regard, eristic legitimation can create ‘motivation traps’ for the affected employees.

Takeaways

The downsides of managerial unfairness have long been recognized. Yet, how managers can rhetorically suppress the resolution of unfairness complaints is often neglected. Our findings can be used to make organizational improvements. Here are our suggestions for practitioners:

• When addressing employees’ claims of unfairness, it is essential to thoroughly examine managers’ potential justifications to ensure they are not based on invalid or misleading reasons.
• Practitioners should tackle the factors leading to eristic justifications by discouraging such justifications, fostering stronger social connections between employees and managers, and choosing managers who tend to be open-minded.
• Organizational regulations should be explicit to reduce uncertainties and prevent disagreements about what the organization prescribes for distributive justice.
• Managers should be accountable for an eristic justification.

For professionals overseeing managerial performance, our findings also offer valuable insights. In situations where contributions to organizational outcomes are challenging to measure due to performance ambiguity, managerial explanations should be scrutinized more carefully. Similarly, when there is a causal ambiguity about unfavorable business outcomes,  governance mechanisms should either address these ambiguities to minimize them or establish disincentives to minimize the potential for eristic justifications capitalizing on uncertainties.