The relationship of upward influence tactics with age, gender and industry: An analysis of Asian perspective

We begin with a review of the upward influence literature and its relationship with human resource decisions of performance ratings, promotability assessments and salary progression. In particular, we examined whether men and women display different influence behavior in diverse settings in Asia, especially in Pakistan. It is well recognized in studies of managerial behavior that a manager’s effectiveness highly depends upon his/her success in dealing with interpersonal relationships. Within the past decade, organizational theory and research have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the upward influence process in organizations. Conspicuously missing from this research literature is information on the relationship between the use of upward influence tactics to gender, Age and type of Industry. Few studies have examined upward influence behavior in the gender context, and even fewer have used Asian samples. Therefore, given the limited study of Asian upward influence behavior and the importance of Asia to the world economy (“War of the Worlds,” 1994), it is important for business people on both sides of the pacific to understand how influence behavior in Asia might converge or diverge with those behaviors in the West. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to look at how the tactics of upward influence adopted by the manager’s play a role in their career advancement and whether gender, type of industry and Age differences exist in the choice of upward influence tactics. A set of potentially testable propositions regarding the relation between use of influence tactics, gender, age and industry is developed and discussed