Expressions of Dissent in Email

Organizational Dissent

Organizational dissent is a form of organizational communication used in expressing disagreeing or contradictory opinions in relation to various policies, practices, or events (Kassing, 1997, 2011). Theoretical underpinnings of organizational dissent include Hirschman’s (1970) Exit-Voice-Loyalty model, which examines employee behavior when faced with unsatisfactory conditions; Hart and Burks’ (1972) concept of rhetorical sensitivity addressing communicators’ ability to construct authentic messages appropriate to contextual factors; and, upward influence strategies (Kipnis, Schmidt, & Wilkinson, 1980; Waldron, 1999) focusing on success of specific tactics in voicing disagreement (Garner, 2009; Graham, 1986; Kassing, 1997; Sprague & Ruud, 1988). These approaches fit within a larger framework for understanding dissent, which Kassing (1997) articulated as encompassing triggers of, strategies for, and expressions of dissent influenced by organizational, relational, and individual factors. The following section describes the progression of research addressing this model.

Dissent expression falls along a continuum from complaining to whistle-blowing and is prompted by an equally diverse spectrum of triggers, including reactions to illegal, immoral, insensitive, inefficient, or incredibly stupid behaviors (Redding, 1985). Sprague and Ruud’s (1988) case study of a high-tech organization identified the desire to start doing something, stop a practice, or resist change as key impetuses for employee dissent. They found employees often dissented about middle-of-the-road triggers, such as issues of office politics, career advancement, and unjust treatment. While some conceptualizations of dissent expression focus on disagreeing messages as direct, straightforward, and moving up organizational hierarchies, other definitions treat dissent as inclusive of more indirect forms of communication, including hinting and recruiting allies (Redding, 1985). According to Kassing (2002), “dissent-triggering events exist to varying degrees as amalgamations of dissent topics and foci” (p. 56). He identifies a typology of triggers, including dissent about employee treatment, organizational change, decision making, inefficiency, roles/responsibilities, resources, ethics, performance evaluations, and harm prevention. A trigger event may prompt one of several dissent strategies by employees. The employee may dissent to supervisors or to management, commonly termed articulated dissent; to coworkers or other members of the organization at the same level within the hierarchy, known as latent dissent; or through displaced dissent, which is directed toward members outside of the organization, such as friends or family (Kassing, 1998). In addition to the targets of dissent messages, various studies focus on the content of such messages. Kassing’s (2002) analysis of employee narrative accounts identified five types of articulated dissent strategies, including direct-factual appeals where employees reference evidence, knowledge, and personal experience; repetition where messages are repeated across time; solution presentation where a solution is provided in addition to evidence; circumvention where perceived lack of receptivity from supervisors leads an employee to go over his/her head; and, threatening resignation where employees use their potential leaving as leverage. Garner (2009) examined the content of both articulated and latent dissent messages, finding solution presentation, direct-factual appeals, coalitions (finding allies), and inspiration (appeals to morals and values) were the most commonly used strategies.

Although employees have numerous response options available, Sprague and Ruud (1988) found that employees in their case study displayed little conscious awareness of the available options. When making decisions, employees focused on different factors, including their organization’s receptiveness or tolerance for dissenters, personal integrity, and potential negative effects. These findings fuel Kassing’s program of dissent research, which illuminates how these individual, relational, and organizational factors influence not only the strategies and content of dissent expression, but also the perception of dissenters’ competence. Dissent strategy selection is influenced by employees’ worth, value, identification, traits, roles, influence, and experience within their organizations (Kassing, 2000a; Kassing & Armstrong, 2001; Kassing & Avtgis, 1999, 2001; Kassing & DiCioccio, 2004; Payne, 2007). Additionally, employees’ perception of the quality of the relationship they have with their supervisors and their perceptions of the organization’s climate or openness for opinion sharing and fairness in decision making are significant to the strategy implemented (Goodboy, Chory, & Dunleavy, 2008; Graham, 1986; Kassing, 2000b, 2002, 2008; Kassing & McDowell, 2008; Sprague & Ruud, 1988). In terms of the perceptions formed of organizational dissenters, Kassing (2001) found that employees who use articulated (upward) forms of dissent are viewed as less argumentative and aggressive and more satisfied and identified with the organization. He also found that employees who have positive supervisory relationships conducive to open communication and input are more likely to use articulated dissent.

In sum, this literature highlights current conceptualizations of dissent expression. First, organizational dissent can represent formal and informal means of communicating disagreement about organizational practices, procedures, policies, events, and even people. Messages can be directed toward management, coworkers, or individuals outside the organization. The content of these messages ranges from using logical appeals to more pathos-oriented content, such as threatening to leave an organization. In addition to specific triggers and targets, dissent decisions are influenced by organizational characteristics and climate considerations, such as openness toward contradictory messages, employee factors, such as organizational worth and assertiveness, and relational variables such as supervisor/subordinate openness. Little empirical work focuses on the role technology plays in the dissent process. Employees may use technology to express their dissent; however, the literature presents a complex picture of whether technology optimizes opportunities for dissent or merely reflects an organization’s norms for dissent expression.

Technology and Dissent Expression

Most of the research specific to dissent focuses on the F2F nature of communicating disagreeing messages; however, new(er) communication technologies, such as email, instant messaging, and smart phones are taking increasingly prominent roles in how we conduct business regardless of the sensitivity of the topics involved (Ducheneaut & Watts, 2005). Scholars have begun to explore various facets of email in the workplace. Some have examined how the wording choices of email constitute strategic communication (DeKay, 2010; Volkema, Fleck, & Hofmeister, 2011). Others have have offered guidelines for using email appropriately in a business context (Granberry & Strasser, 2007; Shipley & Schwalbe, 2008). As Zhu and White (2009) note, however, among the scholarship addressing the use of email in organizations, few studies involved researching actual practitioners. Although Taylor, Fieldman, and Altman (2008) argue that email is the most important change in communication media in the workplace since the telephone, no research focuses on the role these technologies play in organizational dissent.

Research on the use of email technology in organizations covers what van den Hooff, Groot, and de Jonge (2005) label as contingency approaches, subjectivist theories, and situational theories. Contingency theories focus on the fit between medium and message characteristics. Within this approach, media richness theory describes different media as lean or rich in their ability to communicate multiple interaction cues, and email is categorized as a “lean” medium (Daft & Lengel, 1984). Subjectivist theories focus on the influence of the social environment on email use. Koo, Wati, and Jung (2011), for example, review a variety of studies eschewing the simplistic categorization of email as a lean medium. Furthermore, they found the use of media was grounded in such factors as “group norms, collective rules, social utility, coworker and supervisor attitudes and behaviors, the relationship of the sender and receiver, and the socially created symbolic meaning of the medium itself” (p. 454). As more networked forms of organizations emerge along with greater personal communication technologies, email is seldom treated as an inappropriate option for communicating sensitive or equivocal information (Markus, 1994). Finally, van den Hooff et al. (2005) explain that situational theories of email use focus on “communication technologies’ capacity to overcome certain situational constraints” (p. 9). Users’ personal communication style plus demands of specific tasks in combination with organization norms affects a person’s perception of the appropriateness and richness of using email.

Early work on computer-mediated communication (CMC) touted the ability of technology to be a democratizing force in organizations (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991) as it would provide greater access to members at different levels of the hierarchy; however, as Mantovani (1994) argues, “what happens to the networked organizations using Email depends more on their culture, on the social actors’ goals, and on local circumstances than on technology per se” (p. 48). Organizations will develop norms for the use of technology, which may or may not promote participation, but messages communicated will more than likely follow general communicative norms and patterns. Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) supports the notion that as employees identify with their organizations, they are more likely to conform to the social rules of the context and subsequent rules for appropriate technology use. “One simply cannot discount the organizational context in which the technology is used, the history of past interactions built over time and anticipations of consequences for future interactions” (Ducheneaut & Watts, p. 33).

More recently, scholars have begun to explore the implications for miscommunication through email. For example, Byron (2008) suggests emails can have a “neutrality effect” in which the email is seen as “more neutral than intended by the sender” and a negativity effect in which the email is perceived as “more intensely negative than senders intend” (Byron, 2008, p. 313). Such misinterpretation of the sender’s intent, in a business setting, can have profound implications for the organizational identity of an email sender whose message gets called into question (Haugh, 2010). Friedman and Currall (2003) theorize that using email to address conflict is more likely to escalate the conflict because of emails’ structural components. Specifically, email “diminishes feedback,” which reduces repairing and self-correcting behavior and self-awareness and information about the other party. The filtering of social cues reduces the saliency of social rules. Email also allows users to construct lengthy email and review and revise messages, which may lead employees to lose focus on the original message, use anger-provoking statements, and experience an increase in negative feelings and a deepened commitment to one’s own position. M. Morris, Nadler, Kurtzberg, and Thompson (2002) also connect email to less-successful negotiations because of a decrease in the amount of time building rapport compared with F2F or even telephone negotiations. This body of research indicates employees should use caution when selecting email as their channel for dissent expression as dissent is potentially a conflict-ridden event. Employees should be aware of the potential negative effects and craft messages accordingly.

Communication Rules and Dissent

Organizational norms can suggest rules for technology use. Some organizations also provide training on email usage within the organization. There are no current statistics on the number of organizations that provide formal training regarding appropriate organizational uses of email. It is more clear, however, that most employees have little choice about communication technologies used as these technologies are often provided or dictated by the organization. The focus herein does not address how an organization attempts to formally mandate use of email as a communication tool; rather, the focus here examines employee’s understandings of email, which then informs his or her use of email in dissent expression.

Recent studies highlight the importance of organizational and individual influences on dissent expression. According to Kassing (2008), employees tend to weigh both face management and climate considerations when choosing when and how to communicate disagreement. In deciding to dissent, employees weigh climate dimensions more heavily than threats of punishment or retaliation. These climate dimensions could include a manager’s willingness to listen and take action or personal levels of attachment and commitment to the organization. Employees are also aware of the contextual rules for communicating within their organization and sensitive to the perceptions formed of those who choose to dissent. The decision to dissent can lead to an employee being identified as a “problem” employee, so the need to use caution is salient.

On the other hand, dissent can serve as a marker of one’s organizational identity and commitment. McDonough’s (2010) analysis of dissent as a moral force in organizations points to the inherent connection between dissent and communication rules. Dissent, he explains, requires both a sense of association and agreement as well as diverse views. In order to maintain what McDonough refers to as “loyal disagreement,” organizational members must be able to express dissent that maintains a sense of loyalty and connection to the group. In the same vein, Carbaugh (1990) in exploring communication rules evident on a television talk show found communication rules surrounding disagreement fostered the ability to disagree, yet to continue the conversation. Carbaugh concludes, “while a dissensus on the current topic is created, there is often overlooked the consensual rules that enable the performance” (p. 134). Through the use of communication rules, employees can align themselves as a concerned organizational member, as rules provide “the guides people use to recognize and display orientations” (G. H. Morris & Hopper, 1987, p. 17). We will argue herein that consensual rules about how to dissent can serve a similar function in creating an atmosphere of loyal disagreement.

We contend that an ontological connection exists between dissent and the need to carefully construct communication rules about how to dissent effectively. Gilsdorf (1998) argues that people’s innate tendencies to assign meanings predispose them to form an abundance of rules. Rules scholars have also acknowledged the critical role a person’s intentions and goals play in determining the most desirable actions (Cushman, 1977; Shimanoff, 1980; Wiseman, 1980). In an organizational context, the lack of formal training for email use that exists in most organizations coupled with heightened stakes of job security make the need for employee creation of communication rules imperative. The inevitability of disagreement combined with the personal and financial interests associated with employment suggest that strategy is essential to dissent.

Formulating effective strategy in understanding and enacting rules begins with recognition of one’s context (Shimanoff, 1980). Each context suggests a different set of possibilities and limitations. The context helps to define the appropriate prescribed behavior and the force with which people maintain that rule. Dougherty and Drumheller (2006) explain that employees’ perceptions of Western organizations as rational, emotion-free contexts enhance their need to create rules for expressing emotion. Employees accept the rationality/emotionality dichotomy and reinforce rules for emotional expression. Many employees emphasize following emotion display rules, such as maintaining professionalism and masking negative emotions (Kramer & Hess, 2002). Since issues of dissent are often emotion laden, similar rules for dissenting verbally or electronically may be enacted by employees.

In addition to studying the importance of context, scholars have sought to identify different rules guiding communicative behaviors. For example, Harris and Cronen (1979) distinguish between constitutive rules and regulative rules. Constitutive rules “specify how meanings at one level of interaction may “count as” meanings at another level of abstraction” (p. 15). For example, they argue that if one were to look at aggressive versus meek as two constructs at different ends of a spectrum, then one might place specific behaviors at certain points along that continuum. By contrast, regulative rules are developed by individuals to guide their actions. The individual choices are constrained by larger, cultural forces that guide and serve as a basis for judgment about individual conduct. For clarity, constitutive rules deal with meanings and codes that guide rules, and regulative rules provide a sense of how individual goals coalesce with a cultural context that guides normative action.

Because of the inherent need in the context of dissent for employees to find “appropriate” ways of communicating and because email provides an electronic context that requires a unique communication skill set, we ask the first research question:

In addition to exploring the rules employees follow when constructing messages of disagreement, greater understanding is needed of the broader role of email in dissent expression, including motivations and triggers for email dissent. Through this information, we can come to understand how technology can both constrain and promote employee voice. Therefore, we pose the second research question:

Participants

Twenty-one interviewees were located through a convenience snowball sample. Fourteen of the participants were female, and seven were male. The criterion for inclusion in the study is that participants needed to have significant experience in using email at the workplace. The researchers sought a diverse range of input so that we could discern communication rules evident across organizational boundaries. Interviewees represented an array of professions, and a variety of organizations, such as governmental agencies, profit and nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions. While specific demographic data such as age were not asked, participants were all in their early and mid-career.

Procedures

A qualitative approach was used for this study because there is no existing literature specifically looking at email’s role in organizational dissent. Cochran and Dolan’s (1984) delineation between research suggests quantitative research is more “confirmatory” and qualitative research is more “exploratory” (p. 29). While we certainly do not endorse the idea that qualitative research should be relegated to serving as a precursor to a more important quantitative study, we maintain that qualitative methods best address the exploratory nature of this study. As with all qualitative studies, our objective is not to generalize beyond the scope of the participants in this study but to begin to examine a phenomenon that has been almost completely neglected in the existing literature on dissent specifically looking at employees’ rules for expressing dissent via email.

The data for this article were derived from a larger corpus of interview data exploring the relationship between emails and emotions in organizations. A moderately scheduled interview was used to probe three main topic areas: favorite or most enjoyable emails, least favorite emails, and the use of dissent through email. The inclusion of the topic of dissent within the context of a larger study proved to be advantageous with respect to learning more about the role of email in organizational dissent. The questions about “least favorite” emails sometimes elicited stories about organizational dissent that enriched the understanding of the roles of email in organizational dissent. When the interviewer entered the final phase of the interview directly addressing dissent, each interviewee was read Kassing’s (1997) characterization of dissent as expressing disagreeing or contradictory opinions in relation to various organizational policy, practices, or events. Given that description of dissent, participants were then asked to offer examples and stories that involved using email for dissent at the workplace.

The length of interviews ranged from 20 to 45 minutes. All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. The first author conducted all the interviews, trained the transcriber, and personally transcribed three of the interviews. This is important because the data analysis, involving such traits as vocal emphasis and inflection began during the data collection process and continued throughout the analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The data specifically involving some form of discussion of dissent totaled 73 single-spaced pages. To promote greater transparency in the research process, each participant was invited to select her or his own pseudonym so that each could see how responses were used in any publications resulting from this research project. Approximately one fourth of the interviewees opted to select a pseudonym, and the first author selected the remainder of the pseudonyms.

For this study, data involving references to any forms of displeasure with or contradictory opinions of organizational policies and practices were extracted. On more careful review of these extracted instances, some were deemed as not constituting dissent. For example, some interviewees described a boss expressing her or his displeasure with an employee’s performance on a task. We viewed those instances as constituting a “reprimand” or a “correction.” The two coauthors independently conducted thematic data analysis of the data, using Owen’s (1984) approach for identifying themes. Owen’s criteria for locating themes in data include searching for recurrence, repetition, and forcefulness. Recurrence indicates that the theme is evident among different interviewees. Repetition refers to multiple instantiations of key rules and phrases. Forcefulness includes factors, such as “vocal inflection, volume, or dramatic pauses” which serve to punctuate specific ideas (p. 275). Although the first author recalled speaker emphasis from recollection of the interviews, both analysts were consistent in recognizing forcefulness because of the verbal cues of forcefulness indicated in the transcriptions. The use of powerful connotative words and vivid descriptions accompanied the more animated vocal expressions.

An initial review of the data suggested interviewees offered both directly solicited and spontaneous statements about their perceptions of the “appropriate” use of email in organizational dissent. Essentially, the participants articulated rules they associated with dissent through email. In addition, then, to the thematic analysis of locating patterns naturally occurring in the data, data were also reviewed for communication rules evident among all data.

Carbaugh (1990) posited four criteria for identifying communication rules: They are reportable by those in the communication system, they are recurrent across participants, they are “widely intelligible” or recognizable by participants, and they can be invoked as “repair mechanisms” in the midst of discord (p. 122). In reviewing data with special attention to rules for engaging in dissent through email and in broader discussions of the role of emails in dissent, Owen’s (1984) criteria for thematic analysis were applied. Specifically in the study of rules, however, we also applied Schegloff’s (1972) technique of seeking “deviant cases” or disconfirming instances that may lend additional insight and clarity into the meaning of the rule.

Consistent with a rules approach to studying qualitative data, themes were identified inductively, through careful scrutiny of the interview data. Although existing research proposes a framework for how dissent gets done, none of the existing studies explores the use of email in dissent processes. Rather than assume an a priori expectation that the same elements would be evident in electronic settings, we chose to allow the interviewees to play a more focal role in identifying the rules that are significant to them when using email. Instead of focusing on a case study based on a single organization, we obtained data from employees in a variety of occupations to see if there were some shared rules and themes that cross organizational boundaries.

Rules for Dissent

Two themes emerged with regard to the first research question. Employees perceived variations of two rules, to be cautious of committing dissent to writing and to maintain professionalism. The most recurrent theme specifying a communication rule for organizational dissent through email was the statement that some issues should not be committed to writing. Interviewees acknowledged the lack of privacy of these messages because of the danger of possible future forwarding of the email to the wrong person or monitoring by the organization. This caused a sense of “fear” and made some “paranoid” about writing anything controversial in an email. An example of this can be seen when Anna, an employee at a regional hospital, responded to questions about whether she had seen dissent in an email by saying she had not seen it in internal communications because “you need to be very careful if you’re going to put something in an email and recognize that you have no control after you hit send of where that goes.” Hannah, an elementary school teacher, conveyed a similar sentiment, explaining that dissenting conversations occurred in “hush hush tones” but not through email because it “is able to be seen by too many people and then it’s in writing and not very confidential at that point.”

While some, such as Anna and Hannah, indicated they would never use email to express dissent, others suggested they would use email, but cited rules for appropriate ways of expressing dissent through email. Most of the ideas presented for appropriate use of email when dissenting within an organization seemed to fit within a larger constitutive rule for “be professional” in the workplace. This constitutive rule of enacting professionalism through emails was promoted through a larger subset of prescriptive rule statements. The themes associated with acting professionally included avoiding angry or overly emotional emails, knowing when to talk rather than use emails, and recognizing who to include (through the use of “cc” and “bcc”).

Jennifer, who worked as administrative staff at a resort, responded to a question about whether she believed it was ever appropriate to express dissent through email by saying, “If it is done professionally, I would say yes.” When probed regarding how she would differentiate between professional and unprofessional expressions of dissent, she responded, “Not going off on an emotional tirade about something, but just stating the facts and more information as to why you disagree and have some issue.”

Although interviewees did not consistently use the terms professional and unprofessional to characterize appropriate and inappropriate emails, the discourse surrounding emails that are deemed inappropriate seemed to imply some lack of professionalism or professional competence. Very often, the data affirming the rule of managing emotions through email often arose when discussing an instance where this rule was violated. Jason, a university instructor, described one of his least favorite emails, which came from another faculty member. Jason received an email response to a plan he had proposed, describing the email as follows:

Jason went on to explain his concern over this lateral form of dissent was “probably more form over substance” and how he was concerned with “having a more collegial attitude.” Based on the total description and the following account of the perceived breach in collegiality, this problematic episode was seen as one of a violation of professionalism.

While most instances of strong reactions and venting were disparaged, there was one “deviant case” where venting was cited as an acceptable activity. Pam, who is employed at a public relations firm, responded to the question of whether it was appropriate to voice dissent through email by saying,

I think it depends on the relationship and the intent. I mean if you are just venting and you and you know co-workers vent to one another all the time, you know if your intention is just to vent and sometimes you just need to kind of blow off some steam, your intention’s not to harm anybody.

Pam’s response diverges with those of others who disparaged venting but gives a more nuanced understanding in doing so. She suggests if your intention is “just to vent” among others who also vent, then it is appropriate. In all the other instances wherein “venting” and/or a strong emotional response was disapproved of, the email recipient was the target of the disapproval. Pam’s response suggests venting to peers (lateral dissent) in a way that is not harmful to the peer may not violate the code of professionalism. As she later elaborated her response, however, she again pointed to the need to be careful about what was committed to writing because that message could later be “used against you.” Even when “just venting,” Pam remains mindful of potential ramifications of the email as an enduring form of communication.

Interviewees suggested that with unpleasant emails in general (not just those relating to dissent), one needs to distinguish between when it is best to email and when it is better to speak F2F or through the telephone. Ken, who manages employees in a public relations firm, described asking an employee to do a task, and the employee used email to resist working on the task. Ken went on to explain,

It is easy to hit reply and type out something; perhaps sometimes instead of hitting reply we ought to pick up the phone and have a conversation. In a situation where we don’t agree or we’re going to have a response that we think will not be well received by the other party we ought to pick up the phone and have a personal conversation.

Similarly, others who worked in close proximity with peers cited a preference for handling controversial issues F2F to gain the full advantage of seeing the other person’s nonverbal cues.

A final rule cited for email use involved who should be included on a dissent message. Most people believed it was generally best to address dissenting emails only to those whose position(s) best relates to the issue. Once again, this rule was most often identified when a coworker violated this rule. Tony, a bank employee, described a time when he made a mistake in calculating an account issue. His coworker at an off-site location did not catch it, and when she later found the mistake, responded through email. Tony describes the situation as follows:

Well she came back and said that I overlooked something. And so she copied the President of the company and my supervisor instead of coming directly to me stating that I did something wrong. So the President called me and was yelling at me and we had a conversation.

Tony further expressed the belief she was merely trying to protect herself from blame through this strategy and that the scope of the problem could have been mitigated had she telephoned him directly instead.

Emma, in describing a “least favorite email” she had received, recalled an employee who dissented at not being hired for another job opportunity within the organization by emailing everyone in the office. She explained that in the email:

She said some very negative things towards the person that did get the job—which that person and I were good friends and you know that is not the forum to vent that kind of emotion—I don’t think—a grievance like that. She should have gone to the interview team and spoke with, you know, talked about it.

Emma’s description of the situation points to her beliefs about appropriate ways to file a grievance, which involves contacting those directly involved in the situation only and not venting strong feelings to a broader audience. She described the resulting feelings by those in the office as embarrassed and uncomfortable following the email.

Emma’s example is inclusive of all three rules comprising the larger code rule of using email professionally; she suggested that the venting of strong emotions on a wide scale was inappropriate, that the person should have recognized when talking was more appropriate than emailing, and that the person failed to recognize whom to include and exclude on the recipient list. We have reviewed some specific rules participants cited regarding using dissent in emails: one should not commit dissenting messages to email, and one should be professional in expressing dissent through email. We now turn to some themes in data that were less prescriptive and prohibitive but instead explored some perceived uses of email in dissent.

Dissent and Email

In addition to citing rules for appropriate email use, interviewee responses yielded insight into the broader role of email in organizational dissent. The two main themes discerned were the strategic use of emails in order to engage in dissent more effectively and the role of emails in triggering dissent. These themes are different from the communication rules explored above because participants providing data in these categories were in no way trying to provide guidelines and standards of appropriateness to others or judging any rule violations; rather, the data showed patterns in people’s descriptions of their experience in using emails.

Several individuals acknowledged email offers utilitarian benefits to dissent efforts. Just as some participants suggested it can be easier for a person to become emboldened to vent in unprofessional ways through email, participants also acknowledged that carefully composing messages can sometimes be used strategically. For example, when Missy learned of her organization’s plan for all employees to receive a standard 2% percent salary increase, she was angered because her efforts that year had brought in 8 million dollars in revenue. She explained how she found email to be a more effective means of communicating in this circumstance:

I knew I would probably back down in person, it was something I was so passionate about and hurt about. I was afraid I would, either my bottom lip would quiver, or that you know my heart would betray me in that situation. I would say, “You know it’s not a big deal.” . . . So I really like to get the ugly out of the way in the email then really work for the solution as a request of the discontent.

Missy explained how using email allowed her to commit to raising the issue then use a F2F meeting to negotiate.

Lola also finds the ability to think emails through carefully and communicate asynchronously with her manager works to her advantage, explaining,

I can just kind of type it, and I have more time to think about it and position it and couch it in a nice way. And then I can just send it off and okay, see what happens . . . and then it gives me time when she responds. It just gives me a little more lag time in between to specifically think about how I want to voice my concerns and then to gauge her reaction.

Both Missy and Lola offered examples of articulated dissent in which they favored the ability to avoid direct and possibly awkward confrontations through communicating through a more indirect communication channel. In these cases, email afforded them the opportunity to try to establish an optimally professional tone through carefully edited written messages.

Although a far less prevalent theme, there were a couple of instances where interviewees in management roles described how email was used to invite dissent within the organization. Jordan, for example, suggests how he uses the copy function of email to help quell dissent, saying he uses the copy function when someone is intransigent “so the individual knows who is aware of this information.” Edward also uses email in a different way to invite dissent in his organization. He said before introducing a new plan or policy, managers would sometimes use email to “gauge the acceptance” as a “strategy tactic” to learn responses and anticipate problems.

One strategic use of email that was recurrent across multiple interviewees involved using email to document dissent. In fact, most interviewees cited the tendency to use email for documentation purposes at some point. Patricia, for example, indicated email records can be helpful in self-protection saying, “You’ve got documentation. You print out your copy so you know if you didn’t choose to read this, I did respond to your questions.” In Patricia’s case, records helped to mitigate possible future conflicts. Jordan’s example looked at a specific conflict where he had been unfairly reprimanded by his boss. When asked if he would have preferred for the interaction to have occurred F2F or through email, he responded he preferred email because “a lot of things are forgotten or misconstrued or—or almost basically lied about, so I think in this circumstance it’s very good to have it all on paper.” Brittany just generalized that she saved emails because “you have to protect yourself. You’re only out there for yourself as much as you want to say it’s one company. You have to guard your job.”

Nina, formerly employed in a food service organization that she characterized as severely dysfunctional, described her extensive use of email in dissenting against her employers. As she was preparing to leave her job, she was aware of raises that had been promised for the employees working under her. She explained how she used email in her efforts to guarantee employees would receive what management had previously promised,

I made these brown folders—one for the employees and one for Jackie [her boss]. And I did it for everyone that was getting a raise and I also emailed the Human Resources manager and Jackie saying “John is being promoted to the next ((unclear)) supervisor. He is going to make 10 dollars.” I put this big, long email. When I left and I just figured that was enough. I never printed out that email. And you know in good faith, everybody has a copy of these folders and the email. And what happened is they cancelled my email account. They completely deleted it and they backed it up on a disc that only Lee [Jackie’s boss] has.

Nina explained that they later claimed she had misinformed the employees about their raises and denied the back and forth emails between her and the managers who had previously approved the raises. The above examples show proactive and reactive uses of documentation as well as an occasion where attempting to document email as part of dissenting behavior failed. In addition to strategic uses of email and the role of email in documenting dissent, another theme identified in the data involved emails as triggers of dissent.

When interviewees described receiving a negative email from a boss, one common employee response is to share that email with others. The sharing of the emails became one theme regarding how email played a role in employee dissent. For example, Cameron, who works for an educational support organization, described the emailed reactions between cubicles to her boss having a bad day saying, “A couple of co-workers and I—they’ll send me an email and say, ‘you know our boss is really just having a day today’ or ‘did you see how she yelled at me a couple of minutes ago?’” In addition to sharing emails among office colleagues, interviewees, such as Lola, described forwarding the messages to friends or family when frustrated or upset by an email. Lola said she would forward messages “complaining either that they were wrong about it or it wasn’t my fault, and I don’t know why they’re sending it to me, you know usually with a WTF, ‘what the—you know.’” Even those in close proximity to one another described coworkers commiserating through email representing both latent and displaced forms of dissent.

Limitations and Future Directions

This research focuses on employees’ perceptions of the rules for the content and channels of dissent messages. There is concern that employees’ perceptions of dissent as negative or conflict ridden may have lead them to report more negative experiences. Although Kassing’s (1997) definition was provided to all participants, several participants responded to a connotative interpretation of dissent as conflict ridden and negative as opposed to constructive. While this may represent varying tolerance levels of different organizations for employee voice, this narrow interpretation may have limited our findings. The apparent negative connotations for dissent expressed by some interviewees in this study are consistent with other research examining disdain for even well-intentioned dissent. Dahling, Chau, and Mayer (2012) identified “pro-social rule breaking” behaviors as those where the rule breaker wishes to increase organizational effectiveness. They suggest that behaviors such as whistle-blowing can constitute prosocial behaviors; however, scholarly and organizational understandings of “constructive deviance” remain in a nascent state of development.

In some interviews, it became evident that interviewee notions of dissent diverged from the definition presented. Some participants clearly stated one should not engage in dissent through email; however, it eventually became clear the interviewee was really referring only to articulated dissent. The same person who claimed dissent should never occur through email would then freely acknowledge forwarding “bad” emails to family, friends, and coworkers. It would be useful for future qualitative researchers of this topic to know that implicit local understandings of dissent may limit interviewee responses. Future work on dissent should explore these differences in the perception of the content and use of latent and articulated dissent.

In addition to rules and norms for dissent, future study of email dissent might gauge the goals and outcomes of these strategies. For some, email was an important tool in meeting the goal of buffering conflict while others sought specific outcomes such as a F2F meeting or a policy change. These goals are simultaneously managed, hierarchical, and sometimes subconscious. More in-depth study of how goals affect the content, channel, and outcome of dissent would be fruitful in carrying this line of research forward.

Finally, while this research does not suggest employees view email as a democratizing, status-leveling force, there were hints at the potential for email to serve democratizing functions. One subject in the study mentioned that email provided her a way to communicate her ideas without getting interrupted by men in the organization. This was one of the few gender references but suggests email, under some circumstances, holds the potential for providing lower status or minority members with additional outlets for getting their voices heard. More definitively, however, this study shows how email can serve a unifying function among peers within an organization. Venting emailed to dissent among one’s peers can provide a possible stress-relieving function and may be an important contributor to a sense of community within the workplace. The role of email as a democratizing and community-building force warrants further attention.

Implications and Conclusion

This research offers practical benefits regarding the organizational uses of email by employers and employees in dissent expression. While some employees found ways to use email to strategically communicate dissent upward in an organization, the more common use of email was to express one’s concerns to coworkers or, in some cases, to friends and family. This is important because it signals that, for the most part, management is left “out of the loop” with respect to employee concerns. There were examples of managers strategically using email to invite constructive dissent leading to greater levels of input into decision making and more collaborative work processes; however, these examples were relatively rare when compared with the universal tendency to “vent” through or about emails to others. The participants in this study often feared articulated dissent through email and feared discovery of their dissent.

This study also raises practical concerns about individual understandings of dissent that restrict employees’ potential for tapping the potentially positive benefits of dissent. Additionally, employee understandings of dissent restrict their recognition of dissent as including an activity among peers that has a potentially positive function. While some engaged in articulated dissent in pursuit of personal goals, there were no cases of individuals acknowledging dissent as a form of organizational commitment or as a means of improving the organization. Until organizations can find a way to reframe “dissent” from a concept of contention and disagreement to one of constructive dialogue, employees will continue to restrict critical input to the detriment of their workplace.

Finally, this research represents an exploratory investigation that challenges the idea that dissent is primarily a F2F phenomenon and is more complex than one person simply sending an electronic message to another. As Mantovani (1994) describes, CMC is deeply situated with the power to influence interactions of organizational members. As organizations use a growing variety of CMC channels, communication scholarship needs to question and examine how these technologies shape and transform communicative processes within the organization.