Social Power for Compliance of Middle Managers and Front-Line Workers with Quality Improvement Policies

Abstract

The results of a company-wide quality improvement programme are usually new company policies. Implementation of these quality improvement policies can be extremely difficult, because employees may not comply with them. A survey of 67 middle managers and 174 front‐line workers was conducted in Hong Kong to investigate the role of social power in influencing compliance with quality policies. The results show that front‐line workers responded best to reward and legitimate power, with expert power receiving the lowest score. Managers were more responsive to expert and informational power and less to reward and legitimate power. The results also indicate that the response to coercive and referent power in both groups was fairly low.