Status–Authority Asymmetry between Professions: The Case of 911 Dispatchers and Police Officers

Status–authority asymmetry in the workplace emerges when lower-status professionals are ascribed with the functional authority to oversee higher-status professionals and elicit compliance from them on specific processes or tasks. Eliciting such compliance is ridden with challenges. How and when can lower-status professionals with functional authority elicit compliance from higher-status professionals? To examine this question, I conducted a 24-month ethnography of 911 emergency coordination to understand how 911 dispatchers (lower-status professionals with functional authority) can elicit compliance from police officers (higher-status professionals). I identify a set of relational styles—entailing interactional practices and communication media—enacted by the dispatchers. My findings suggest that dispatchers whose relational styles involved customizing the workflow via private communications with police officers or privately escalating cases of officers’ noncompliance to supervisors did not elicit greater compliance. In contrast, dispatchers who did elicit compliance used a peer publicizing relational style: they shared news of the noncompliant behavior—generally in a bantering, humorous manner—with an officer’s immediate peers using a communication medium that all officers in the police unit could hear. Publicizing noncompliant behavior among the immediate peers triggered the officer to self-discipline, as that noncompliant officer’s trustworthiness was on the line in front of the peer group. More generally, through enrolling an alter’s peers in the compliance process, the lower-status professionals with functional authority could generate second-degree influence and elicit compliance from the higher-status professionals.

Status-Authority Asymmetry between Professions: The Case of 911 Dispatchers and Police Officers

Status-authority asymmetry in the workplace emerges when lower-status professionals are ascribed with higher functional authority to oversee higher-status professionals and elicit compliance from them. However, eliciting compliance from the higher-status professionals is ridden with challenges. How and when lower-status professionals with functional authority could elicit compliance from higher-status professionals? To examine this question, I conducted a 24-month ethnography of 911 emergency coordination to understand how 911 dispatchers (lower-status professionals with functional authority) were able to elicit compliance from the police officers (higher-status professionals). I identify a set of relational styles – entailing interactional practices and communication media – enacted by the 911 dispatchers. Findings suggest that as compared to the customizing and the escalating relational styles enacted via the private communication medium, the publicizing relational style (i.e., publicizing the noncompliant behavior of an officer to his immediate peers) enacted via the peer communication medium enabled the dispatchers to elicit compliance. Such peer publicizing triggered self-disciplining, as that noncompliant officers’ trustworthiness is on the line in front of the peer group. More generally, through enrolling the alters’ peers in the compliance process, the lower-status professionals with functional authority were able to generate second-degree influence and elicit compliance from the higher-status professionals.

Doing Good by Doing Bad: How Tone at the Top and Tone at the Bottom Impact Performance-Improving Noncompliant Behavior

This study investigates how tone at the top, implemented by top management, and tone at the bottom, in an employee’s immediate work environment, determine noncompliance. We focus on the disallowed actions of employees that improve their own and, in turn, the company’s performance, referred to as performance-improving noncompliant behavior (PINC behavior). We conduct a survey of German sales employees to investigate specifically how, on the one hand, (1) corporate rules and (2) performance pressure, both implemented by top management, and, on the other hand, (3) others’ PINC expectations and (4) others’ PINC behavior, both arising from the employee’s immediate work environment, influence PINC behavior. When considered in isolation, we find that corporate rules, as top management’s main instrument to guide employee behavior, decrease employee PINC behavior. However, this effect is negatively influenced by the employees’ immediate work environment when employees are expected to engage in PINC or when others engage in PINC. In contrast, even though top management places great performance pressure on employees, that by itself does not increase PINC behavior. Overall, our study informs practitioners and researchers about whether and how the four determinants increase or decrease employees’ PINC behavior, which is important to comprehend triggers and to counteract such misconduct.

Investigating Environmental Transgressions at Corbett Tiger Reserve, India

Through a qualitative lens involving both in-depth interviews and focus groups, this research attempts to probe the issues of environmental transgressions caused by tourists and tourism providers in one of the oldest and largest national parks in India, the Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR), Uttrakhand. It reveals that even though tourism stakeholders are conscious of environmental transgressions, concrete efforts towards environmentally sustainable practices in CTR do not seem to be a priority. Nevertheless, this research suggests that visitor’s noncompliant behavior may be altered by enhancing place attachment through repeat visitations, improving visitor experiences, and effective information dissemination. Also, future tourism operations may require a reduction in environmental transgressions through the creation of an agency that can assist community-based tourism operations.

Criminogenic Factors Associated with Noncompliance and Rearrest of Mental Health Court Participants

There is a considerable overrepresentation of individuals with mental health issues within the U.S. criminal justice system as compared with the general population. Mental health courts (MHCs) arose in response to this concern, with a primary aim of reducing recidivism. Thus far, MHC research has largely neglected the potential utility of criminogenic factors. A retrospective analysis of 163 MHC participants was conducted to examine the association between clinical and criminogenic factors and noncompliance, as well as for recidivism, using a series of Bayesian negative binomial regression models to compare predictors. Criminogenic factors, namely first offending prior to the age of 18, having a substance-related diagnosis, commission of a variety of crimes, historical probation or parole violation, and having less than a high school education were associated with an increased rate of engaging in noncompliant behavior and rearrest. None of the clinical factors were directly associated with noncompliance or rearrest outcomes.

InfoSec Process Action Model (IPAM): Targeting Insiders' Weak Password Behavior

ABSTRACT The possibility of noncompliant behavior is a challenge for cybersecurity professionals and their auditors as they try to estimate residual control risk. Building on the recently proposed InfoSec Process Action Model (IPAM), this work explores how nontechnical assessments and interventions can indicate and reduce the likelihood of risky individual behavior. The multi-stage approach seeks to bridge the well-known gap between intent and action. In a strong password creation experiment involving 229 participants, IPAM constructs resulted in a marked increase in R2 for initiating compliance behavior with control expectations from 47 percent to 60 percent. Importantly, the model constructs offer measurable indications despite practical limitations on organizations' ability to assess problematic individual password behavior. A threefold increase in one measure of strong password behavior suggested the process positively impacted individual cybersecurity behavior. The results suggest that the process-nuanced IPAM approach is promising both for assessing and impacting security compliance behavior.

Effect of Frying Instructions for Food Handlers on Acrylamide Concentration in French Fries: An Explorative Study

The objective of this study was to obtain insight into the effect of frying instructions on food handlers' control decisions in restaurants and to investigate the impact of control decisions on the variation and concentration of acrylamide in French fries. The concentrations of acrylamide and reducing sugars were analyzed, the frying temperature and time were measured, and thawing practices were observed. The results obtained before and after instructions were provided to the food handlers were compared for restaurants as a group and for each restaurant. Frying instructions supported food handlers' decisions to start frying when the oil temperature reached 175°C; all handlers started frying at the correct temperature. However, the effect of the instructions on the food handlers' decisions for frying time differed; most handlers increased the frying time beyond 240 s to achieve crispier French fries with a final color dictated by their preference. Providing instructions did not result in a significant difference in the mean concentration of acrylamide in French fries for the restaurants as a group. However, data analyzed for each restaurant revealed that when food handlers properly followed the instructions, the mean concentration of acrylamide was significantly lower (169 μg/kg) than that before instructions were provided (1,517 μg/kg). When food handlers did not complying with the frying instructions, mean acrylamide concentrations were even higher than those before instructions were provided. Two different strategies were developed to overcome the noncompliant behavior of food handlers: establishing requirements for the features of commercial fryers and strict monitoring of compliance with instructions.