ABSTRACT
One of the most malignant and commonplace symptoms of leadership’s dark side is the way in which dissent from powerful leaders is constrained and often eliminated (Kassing 2011 ). Leaders have the power to articulate a ‘vision’ and to ensure that others take action to have it implemented. Consequently, much of the literature on employee ‘voice’ focuses on those forms of expression most calculated to assist in the implementation of goals that, although determined by managers, are assumed to express a unitarist interest (Morrison 2011 ). Followers are generally expected to obey orders rather than ask questions. In this chapter, I look at how this process is enacted in most organizations. Leaders often do not mean to suppress dissent and most of them imagine that what I think of as ‘critical upward communication’ is much more prevalent than research suggests that it actually is. My purpose here is to explore the destructive implications of this for how leaders and followers interact – and to suggest what should be done about it.
