Can Businesses Effectively Regulate Employee Conduct? The Antecedents of Rule Following in Work Settings

Achieving employee adherence to organizational rules and policies is critical for successful coordination and functioning within organizations. In this article, we explore the antecedents of such rule-following behavior and present two studies of employees that compare two strategies for achieving rule and policy adherence: (1) an extrinsically oriented command-and-control model and (2) an intrinsically oriented self-regulatory model. The findings of both studies suggest that the influence of the self-regulatory strategy exceeds that of the command-and-control approach. Overall, these studies highlight the potential value of fostering employee rule following via intrinsically oriented self-regulatory mechanisms and suggest strategies for implementing such mechanisms.