Speaking up: Identifying Employees’ Upward Dissent Strategies

Previous researchers have considered the nature of dissent as well as the audiences to whom employees express dissent. Absent in these treatments is a specific focus on the actual dissent strategies that employees use. The purpose of this study was to assess strategies employees use to express upward dissent within contemporary organizations. Employees completed a survey instrument that asked them to provide a dissent account. Five distinct strategies emerged from an interpretive thematic analysis of the accounts. Results indicated that employees used direct-factual appeal, repetition, solution presentation, circumvention, and threatening-resignation strategies for expressing upward dissent.