Finding power in politeness: identifying competent and courageous social justice advocacy at work

Abstract

The workplace is rife with situations that require courage, from confronting unethical behavior to advocating for equality. However, employees often avoid voicing issues that are politically sensitive (Seeger, 2001, 2004) for fear of retribution, damaging their reputation, or threatening coworkers’ face (Bisel, 2018; Ethics Resource Center, 2000, 2007). Hence, the need for organizational members to communicate courageously and advocate against unethical or unjust behavior, policies, and practices are of the utmost importance (Lyons, 2017). This study sought to distinguish a new type of employee voice and workplace courage behavior: social justice advocacy at work (SJAW). SJAW involves communication by an organizational member that seeks to change organizational policy or practice to remediate real or perceived issues of social injustice in the workplace. Using politeness theory as a framework, this study examined how power, level of politeness, and issue type can shape individuals' perceptions of the competence and courageousness of social justice issues advocacy within the workplace setting. This message effects experiment followed a 2 (power, supervisor-directed vs. coworker-directed) x 3 (levels of politeness, off-record with facework, on-record without facework, on-record without facework with expletives) x 2 (issue type, diversity hiring advocacy message vs. gender pay inequality advocacy message) design. Investigating power dynamics and language features that influence perceptions of speakers can potentially identify more effective ways to voice issues advocacy courageously, while also maintaining both positive workplace images and relationships with coworkers. Results support the notion that potential SJAW advocates need not choose between achieving perceptions of either communication competence or courageousness when engaging in SJAW. On the contrary, the use of politeness and facework in SJAW resulted in higher perceptions of both competence and courageousness for the advocate, with politeness specifically functioning as the linguistic component necessary to fostering both of these perceptions. Additionally, results revealed that participants assigned to conditions in which SJAW was communicated to a supervisor perceived the advocate to be more courageous than participants assigned to conditions in which SJAW was communicated to a coworker. The study also addresses the implications of these results from a critical perspective. Challenging the criticisms of scholars who may decry this study’s recommendations as respectability politics, the author asserts that polite SJAW can and should be viewed as a tool to provide individuals a means to transform their workplace into a site of both conformity and resistance (Dazey, 2021) by adhering to organizationally- and hierarchically-acceptable means for raising social justice issues at work (Harris, 1999). Implications for theory and practice conclude the study.