Turning Round and Round: A Phenomenological Exploration of Managers’ Lived Experience With Employees Requests for Special Treatment

Abstract

Managers face a paradox: treating employees similarly can be seen as fair, but not flexible; treating employees differently can be seen as flexible, but also as favoritism. Yet researchers argue that managers should treat employees both similarly and differently: similarly by creating high-quality, trusting leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships with all their employees; and differently by utilizing idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), or specialized work arrangements, when appropriate. And researchers agree that LMX affects i-deals and i-deals affect LMX. Since most of this research is quantitative in nature, I shine a phenomenological lens on the matter. I asked sixteen managers to share how employees’ requests for special treatment take shape within these differentiated manager-employee relationships. It seems managers first attempt to analyze the request using objective criteria. For some requests, this suffices. But for other requests, managers turn away from this natural attitude toward a more reflective, phenomenological attitude. They turn toward the space between the request and their response. In doing so, they are faced with various challenges. When managers turn to the request, they’re unsure whether it’s normal or abnormal. When they turn to the rules, they’re confused whether they should be approached strictly or flexibly. When they turn to the rulers, they’re left wondering if the rulers are reliable enough to be trusted. When they turn to reason, they can’t be sure which community they should follow. When they turn to relationship, they face the exalted melancholy of every relationship’s ethereal nature. When they turn to resonance, they face the challenge of figuring out how much trust they are afforded by the community. Managers find themselves turning round and round, uncertain whether they’re subject to another object or object of another subject.