Eristic Legitimation of Controversial Managerial Decisions

Abstract This paper investigates the eristic legitimation of managerial decisions – managerial interactions to win without reasoned persuasion of the counterparty – in the context of career‐advancement disputes. This mode of legitimation can be ethically questionable, particularly when powerful managers have the licence for it, while less powerful subordinates may have ‘no other choice’ than reasoned persuasion to address their concerns. The present study involves two sets of interviews to explore eristic legitimations and associated moral and political processes. The first involves former employees who had career advancement disputes with their former managers, and the second, HR professionals with expertise in dealing with employee complaints. Our analysis suggests that managing unfairness concerns can be destructive when managerial authorities argue eristically by exploiting ambiguities around performance, tasks, goals and moral principles. The novelty of this study is that it explores how ambiguities shape managerial handling of employees’ justice concerns and how eristic legitimations during ethical decision‐making can have deleterious consequences for organizations and individual careers. While this study contributes to research on the rhetorical strategies of managers, it has important implications for interactional justice and ethical decision‐making research.