Organizational Dissent - Triggering Events

Triggering Events

Organizational dissent begins with a triggering event. This triggering event is what propels individuals to speak out and share their opinions about organizational practices or politics. An individual will consider the issue of dissent and whom it concerns before deciding what dissent strategy to use. The types of issues that cause employees to dissent vary. The majority of employees expressed dissent due to resistance of organizational change. Other factors include employee treatment, decision making tactics, inefficiency, role/responsibility, resources, ethics, performance evaluations, and preventing harm (Kassing, 2002).

In addition to the dissent-triggering event, the focus of the issues can be relevant to how one expresses dissent. Kassing (2002) believed individuals may focus on improving matters within the organization that affect themselves (self-focused), they may focus on the welfare of the organization of the whole (other-focused) or they may focus on issues concerning their co-workers (neutral).