Works
- Selling Issues to Top Management, Academy of Management Review, 1993
- Moves That Matter: Issue Selling and Organizational Change, Academy of Management Journal, 2001
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Issue selling. Top management's time and attention are critical, limited resources, and issue selling is the process by which people below try to direct that attention to particular issues early in decision-making. Dutton and Ashford analyze it as upward influence, as claiming behavior, and as impression management.
Packaging, involvement, and process moves. Managers who sold issues successfully used packaging moves, such as making the business case and tying the issue to other goals the organization valued; involvement moves, bringing in peers and superiors through formal and informal channels; and process moves, such as preparing before pitching, choosing formal or informal channels, and judging timing. Caveat: The findings rest on retrospective accounts from managers in a single hospital.
What it explains
Dutton and Ashford explain how people below the top get an issue onto senior leaders' agenda: by framing it in terms the organization already values, bringing in allies, and choosing the channel and the moment. Winning attention comes before any decision can be won.