Works
- Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, 1970
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Exit and voice. Members dissatisfied with an organization can exit, by leaving, or use voice, by trying to change it from within through complaint, protest, or proposals. Exit signals that something is wrong; voice is more informative because it says what, and Hirschman treats voice as political by nature.
The interplay of exit, voice, and loyalty. Easy exit tends to undercut voice, since those who can leave rarely bother to complain. Yet Hirschman also argues that the effectiveness of voice is strengthened by the possibility of exit, and he treats loyalty as what holds back exit long enough for voice to work.
What it explains
Hirschman explains why speaking up inside an organization carries more weight when the speaker could credibly leave, and why on-the-record dissent from people who stay is a recognized way to correct an organization in decline.