Promoting Employee Policy Adherence and Rule Following in Work Settings: The Value of Self-Regulatory Approaches

Abstract

Securing employee adherence to work-place rules and company policies is one key antecedent of successful coordination and functioning within organizations. It is important for companies to be able to motivate effectively rule-following behavior among employees. This analysis highlights the value of identifying optimal approaches to securing such behavior. In this paper, two strategies for achieving policy adherence and rule following are compared. Those strategies are: (1) the sanction-based command-and-control model and (2) self-regulatory approaches that are linked to activating employees' ethical judgments. Research findings suggest that, while command-and-control strategies influence employee behavior, self-regulatory strategies have a stronger influence. Studies also explore the basis of these ethical judgments and find that the primary factor shaping them is the procedural justice that employees experience in their workplace. These results suggest that the roots of employee policy adherence and rule-following behavior lie in the procedural justice of the organization. Overall, this analysis highlights the important role ethical judgments play in motivating both rule following and policy adherence among employees in work settings and provides practical suggestions for shaping those judgments.