Redding (1985) found that receptiveness to dissent allows for corrective feedback to monitor unethical and immoral behavior, impractical and ineffectual organizational practices and policies, poor and unfavorable decision making, and insensitivity to employees' workplace needs and desires.
Perlow (2003) found that employee resentment can lead to a decrease in productivity and creativity which can result in the organization losing money, time, and resources.
Employees employ this route when they desire to voice their opinions but lack sufficient avenues to effectively express themselves.
Involves expressing dissent to external audiences, such as family and friends, rather than media or political sources sought out by whistle-blowers.
Kassing and Avtgis (1999) found an individual who is more argumentative and less verbally aggressive is prone to use articulated dissent.
On the other hand, an individual who lacks argumentative skills will resort to using a less direct and more aggressive strategy, latent dissent.
They feel their supervisors respect their opinions and that they have mutual influence and persuasion over the outcome of organizational decisions.
However, a supervisor must keep in mind that expressing dissent can be very difficult and uncomfortable for lower-level managers and employees.
Perlow (2003) states that organizations placing "high value on being polite and avoiding confrontation" can cause employees to be uncomfortable expressing their differences.
Organizational identification and workplace freedom of speech has an effect on an individual's choice of expressing dissent (Kassing, 2000).
This triggering event is what propels individuals to speak out and share their opinions about organizational practices or politics.
Other factors include employee treatment, decision making tactics, inefficiency, role/responsibility, resources, ethics, performance evaluations, and preventing harm (Kassing, 2002).
An individual will use upward articulate dissent in response to functional and other-focused dissent-triggering events.
Upward dissent serves as an important monitoring force and allows the organization to identify problems and issues before they become damaging.
In 2002, Kassing found that once an individual decides to strategically express dissent, they use five different categories: direct-factual appeal, repetition, solution presentation, circumvention, and threatening resignation.
When an employee uses factual information derived from physical evidence, knowledge of organizational policies and practices, and personal work experience, they use the direct-factual appeal strategy.
This strategy involves the employee threatening to resign as a "form of leverage for obtaining responsiveness and action from supervisors and management."
There are some "tricks" that leaders can utilize to develop their employees' attitudes, knowledge, and skills that are needed to foster constructive dissent.
According to Roberto (2005) leaders can create constructive conflict by taking concrete steps before, during, and after a critical decision process.
Before the process begins, leaders can establish ground rules for how people should interact during the deliberations, clarify the role that each individual will play in the discussions, and build mutual respect.
Macy and Neal (1995) claim that since the role of the devil's advocate is to present convincing counterarguments and to challenge the main position, its benefit lies in the fact that it automatically builds conflict into the decision-making process.
They might redirect people's attention and frame the debate in a different light, redescribe the ideas and data in novel ways so as to enhance understanding and spark new branches of discussion or may revisit ideas in hopes of finding common ground (Roberto, 2005).
Deutsch and Coleman (2000) explain that reframing allows conflicting parties to see themselves as being in a collaborative, while producing a positive atmosphere that is conductive to creativity and one that increases the potential solutions available.
Additionally, leaders should celebrate constructive conflict management and help others to remember the success of the process (Roberto, 2005).
Bennis (2004) emphasizes that corporate leaders must promise their followers that they will never be devalued or punished because they express dissent.
When leaders establish a climate of openness, they make constructive conflict a habit in the organization and develop behaviors which can be sustained over time.
Kassing's (2000) research found that when leaders emphasize workplace freedom of speech, employees openly and clearly express dissent to audiences that are responsible for "organizational adjustment".
It involves the expression of dissent to external organizations such as media and political avenues that have the power to take corrective action.
The organization will take great measures to cover-up the problem, devalue the target, reinterpret the events, and intimidate and/or bribe the whistle-blowers (Martin, 2005).
Until the ugly headlines appear and the consequences are unavoidable, companies too often forget that they will suffer far more for ignoring their principled dissendents than by giving them a hearing (Bennis, 2004).