Malicious compliance

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Malicious compliance is a phrase used to describe the behavior of a person who intentionally inflicts harm by strictly following the orders of management or following legal compulsions, knowing that compliance with the orders will cause a loss of some form resulting in damage to the manager’s business or reputation, or a loss to an employee/subordinate. In effect, this is a form of sabotage used to harm leadership or used by leadership to harm subordinates.^[1] Malicious compliance is also in use by management and public communication policies. If the management is biased against an employee and the employee is asking for management to take protective action or take responsibility for management's abuse of subordinates, management will comply with the bare minimum required/compelled by law.^{[citation needed]}

By definition, this is true when the following conditions are present:

• The superior gives erroneous or incomplete orders without knowing the consequences.
• The subordinate has knowledge of something harmful to the job based on the orders given that the superior does not know.
• The subordinate strictly follows the orders given to cause the loss.

The following conditions define malicious compliance by superiors against subordinates:

• The superior gives erroneous or incomplete orders with knowledge that it will obstruct and/or complicate the subordinate's ability to comply.
• The superior verbally abuses the subordinate for failing to comply with the incomplete or erroneous orders.
• The above two conditions repeat until the subordinate reports to a higher authority.
• The higher authority choses the definitions of words used by the subordinate to marginalize or eliminate any legality of the complaint (such as "Bullying isn't illegal.")^{reference needed}

While most businesses and institutions have policies against sabotage in the work place, this type of behavior is sometimes difficult to control. Businesses and government institutions often have conflicting motivations which lead to the subordinate employees having their rights violated by the superiors when the superiors find that they can do so to benefit the interests of management without facing legal consequence for their actions.

A related form of malicious compliance is sometimes referred to as work-to-rule. In a work place, it is an action whereby employees work strictly according to the legal terms of their contract of employment or written procedures. In this situation, the strict adherence to the rules set forth by the written job procedures only allow the workers to do the minimum of amount of labor required and no more, resulting in decreased production. This assumes the written job procedure is inadequate to cover all aspects of a job function.

Malicious compliance is a form of passive aggressive behavior.

[edit] See also

• Sabotage
• Strike Action
• Work-to-rule
• Sociopathy
• Passive Aggressive
• Antisocial Personality Disorder

[edit] References

1. ^ "Malicious compliance is when your boss tells you to do something and you do it even though you know it's not going to have the desired result." U.S. Set To Begin Massive Military Exercises in Qatar - CNN.com transcript, Newsnight presented by Aaron Brown, program date of Dec. 6, 2002. Retrieved June 7, 2007.