When Managers are Insecure, Employee Voices Aren’t Heard: Ethan Burris

Your head may be full of business improvement ideas, but there’s a chance your manager doesn’t want to hear them. That’s a problem for your organization, says Ethan Burris, associate professor of management at the McCombs School of Business.

Successful companies seek out ideas from all employees and then put good ideas into practice, Burris noted in his lunchtime talk at the Texas Enterprise Speaker Series on March 31. “If we’re going to increase performance overall, it’s dependent on employees having candid conversations about what works and what doesn’t, and then having their managers take action,” he said.

So why wouldn’t a manager want to hear from employees? Burris pointed to two related theories: role theory and self-discrepancy theory. Learn more.

The Texas Enterprise Speaker Series offers lunchtime lectures on business-related topics from faculty representing a variety of disciplines at The University of Texas at Austin. http://www.texasenterprise.utexas.edu...