This chapter describes a framework for understanding target compliance. The framework draws from the leadership, influence, and motivation literatures to identify target-based influence triggers and the moderating variables that lead to target compliance. The chapter discusses the proposed relationships and provides directions for future research.

Introduction

The role of power and influence on individual behavior is a necessary consideration in the organizational behavior and organizational theory literatures (Barbuto 2000b; Pfeffer 1981). Looking only at an agent's behaviors in trying to enact behavioral change in targets is, in many ways, like looking only at the behaviors of a truck driver who encounters a deer in the road and has to decide how to avoid an accident. The driver may consider several options to prevent a collision: flash the high-beam headlights, sound the horn, apply the brakes, or turn out of the path of the deer. Each choice is derived entirely from the truck driver's perspective, and none of them usually work to prevent an accident. The optimum solution to avoiding an accident, however, lies in understanding the behaviors of the deer, which will freeze when bright lights shine in its eyes. When the headlights are turned off, the deer will unfreeze and react to the vibrations of the road and the sight and sound of the oncoming truck, thus fleeing from the truck and avoiding the accident.