Rethinking Loyalty within Relational Workplace Dynamics from the Perspective of an Organisational Consultant Practising in Israel

Abstract

This thesis explores the theme of relations of loyalty among members of organisations, in particular during breakdown situations, during which a sense of loyalty is put to the test. The organisational development (OD) consultant’s work within the consultees’ complex dynamic arena of competing loyalties and the question of his/her own loyalties are also examined in this research.

The mainstream management literature that explores the concept of loyalty tends to address it mainly from two perspectives: as individualistic and as functionalist. The first addresses loyalty as an individual’s fixed trait or position and emphasises how individuals experience and express their sense of loyalty. The second perspective views loyalty as an organisational asset that can be moulded to serve the organisational vision and purposes. Both perspectives frame the concept of loyalty as a binary construct – either loyal or disloyal – thus obscuring the complexities of the experience of loyalty. Studies that address issues of consultant-client loyalty relations mainly focus on contractual aspects such as confidentiality and working processes. These research efforts significantly diminish the multifaceted nature of the concept of loyalty within consultancy relationships. In light of the limitations of conventional research, this thesis attempts to address the theme of loyalty from the perspective of the complex responsive processes of human relating. This approach emphasises the exploration of people’s day-to-day local interactions within real life organisational situations, and assumes that organisations are an ongoing patterning of relations among interdependent people.

The research questions of this thesis are: What does loyalty mean to different people in different organisational contexts? How do employees experience loyalty and disloyalty at work? What are the implications for consultancy work? The research method applied to explore these questions is a reflexive collaborative autoethnography, relying on narrative inquiry. The narratives serve as the ‘raw material’ to uncover and explore the ways in which people in organisations experience and make sense of their working together. The researcher takes an autoethnographic account to describe and reflexively analyse the particular occurrences within a group in which the relationship between the researcher and the people being researched forms a significant part of the study. The research is conducted within a community of inquirers, including other doctoral researchers, who are critically engaged in advancing their colleagues’ research studies.

The main arguments that emerge from this research are: (a) Loyalty is a socially dynamic process that reflects people’s sense of affiliation and expresses an inherent paradox: while the experience of loyalty is formed as a relational process, it is also felt and experienced by individuals; (b) The organisation is an arena of dynamic competing loyalties which echoes ongoing power struggles among members of the organisation which manifested in alliances and rivalries; (c) Loyalty to a group or a sub-group fosters a strong sense of cohesiveness which tends to create a unanimous way of thinking, yet weakens the freedom to express opposing or critical views; (d) The consultant can offer the client(s) a shared reflexive exploration, which would help in unveiling the emergent loyalty relationships. Moreover, the consultant may draw the client’s awareness to the multiple perspectives and views that evolve within the group’s interaction and encourage to keep the thinking plural; (e) The consultant, who plays an active role within the client’s interplay of conflicting loyalties, might be caught up in his/her own tendencies to a binary view thus losing their understanding of the complexity of relationships. Thus, the consultant is called upon to explore and interpret his/her own dynamic configurations of loyalty and how they are impacted by and impact consulting processes.