The Relational Dynamics of Issue-Selling: Enacting Different Genres for Dealing with Discontent

Actors without formal power can initiate and shape organizational change through issue-selling as a means to address their concerns about organizational practices. The literature has emphasized the need for perspective-taking and found discontent to be associated with inhibiting fear. Based on a longitudinal field study of middle managers trying to instigate strategic renewal in six different manufacturing companies, we find that discontent can also energize issue-selling, particularly if sellers and -recipients also engage in perspective-taking. We identify three different genres of issue-selling and enacting discontent that are jointly shaped by sellers and -recipients: (a) productive confrontation, (b) avoiding escalation, and (c) collective moaning. In a process model of issue-selling as framing, mobilizing, and pursuing, we illustrate how the genres form part of an organization's collective repertoire of initiating and responding to change. Our findings have implications for pursuing change, as well as for managers seeking to create a constructive environment for expressing discontent.