THE SATISFACTION OF BEING A REBEL

Abstract

"Several researches in organizational environment have shown that there is a norm of allegiance; it consists in valuing positively employees who not only obey the orders of their hierarchical superiors but who also avoid any criticism of them. Here is questioned the degree of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with adopting or refusing to adopt such behavior. 120 employees of the Argentinian private sector (60 men and 60 women) were contacted using the snowball technique and, on a voluntary basis, answered anonymously to two questionnaires. The first one was an allegiance questionnaire of 24 items from the questionnaires of Gangloff & Caboux (2003) and Gangloff & Duchon (2008): 12 items of general allegiance and 12 items differentiating the reasons for allegiance (ideological vs. opportunist). Examples: ""With my boss, I rarely try to defend my ideas"" (general allegiance item); “When my boss takes a decision, I rarely challenge it. Whatever the decision: you should not challenge your boss” (ideological allegiance); “Even if my boss's orders sometimes seem absurd to me, as I want to have quick promotions, I generally obey” (opportunistic allegiance). The subjects answered each item by indicating whether, usually, they adopted rather allegiant or rather rebellious conduct, and they specified, in each of the two cases, if this adoption satisfied or dissatisfied them. Considering that satisfaction is a constituent element of well-being, a second questionnaire was used the Scale for Measuring Manifestations of Psychological Well-Being (EMMDEP) by Massé et al. (1998), made up of 25 items in which subjects ticked off as ""somewhat agree"" (rated 1) vs. ""somewhat disagree"" (rated 0). The results show that 1) allegiant conducts are more frequent than rebellious ones, but only among women (among men, the difference is not significant); 2) dissatisfaction is more frequent with adopting allegiant conducts than with adopting rebellious ones, whatever the gender; 3) satisfaction is more frequent than dissatisfaction, both for the allegiant conducts and for the rebels; 4) Satisfied participants express more well-being than unsatisfied participants. The limits and practical consequences of these results will be discussed."