Loyalty

Loyalty is often associated with passivity, acceptance, and lack of reflection. The term conveys an image of people who are unwilling to challenge authority and will not get out when the going gets tough. By implication, they may be used or taken advantage of by others in the knowledge that they will continue to support the organization no matter what happens and how badly they are treated. This would seem to give elbow room to the powerful and means that those who are loyal do not have much power. Consider loyal members of a political party, such as those in the U.K. Labour Party from the 1980s to the 2000s. These people may have grown up with parents and peers who supported Labour and may have developed an attachment to the party because it upheld their values. In the 1980s, the party jolted to the Left and lost elections, but these members did not decide to leave for the alternatives, such as the Social Democratic Party, even though they did not like their party losing, nor did they much support the left-wing policies that Labour espoused. Then Tony Blair moved the party to the Right and introduced policies these people did not like either, such as market-led public service and an aggressive foreign policy that led to the invasion of Iraq. But they carried on supporting Labour all the way through. The party leaders could take these people's support for granted and did not need to pay attention to their views in deciding policy. In this sense, loyalty is associated with little or no power.

But loyalty need not make people powerless. In fact, loyalty may be associated with active citizens or consumers who notice what is going wrong and agitate to get it right. Albert Hirschman understood this well in his Exit, Voice and Loyalty (1970). Hirschman did see loyalty rather passively, as when someone just waits for things to get better. But he also thought loyalty mediated the relationship between exit and voice, reducing the chances of exit but increasing the probability of voice. In this sense, loyalty gives elbow to voice, which is powerful because some kind of agitation from citizens or consumers keeps organizations on their toes. So loyalty helps people realize their power to change things. Others have developed the notion further, notably Brian Barry (1974), who argued that loyalty contained voice to a certain extent, which means that people who are loyal fight for what they believe in. In that sense, individuals can be powerful when they are strongly motivated through loyalty. And organizations have most to fear from loyalists who turn against leaders out of disgust about how things have been managed. It may be more in the organization's interest to have indifferent supporters who will exit or can be bought off, rather than the committed loyalist who agitates until things get put right.