MGMT 8405M Week 6 Influence Memo Example

Memorandum

To: Doctoral seminar, MGMT 8405M

From: Doctoral student

Date: February 16, 2026

Re: A payroll specialist reversed a signed vendor switch through expertise and evidence, which a position-based account would not have predicted

Finding

At Ostley Staffing, a composite regional staffing firm with about 2,300 placed workers on its payroll each week, the chief financial officer signed a contract in September 2025 to move payroll processing to a lower-cost vendor beginning January 1. Six weeks later the contract was amended to delay the switch by a year and add conditions. The person who produced that reversal was a senior payroll specialist with no budget authority, no direct reports and no seat on the vendor committee. This memo documents how she did it and argues that her influence rested on expertise and evidence, not position.

Sequence With Receipts

On September 12 the contract was signed; the committee minutes record a unanimous recommendation based on a 22 percent cost saving. On September 30 the payroll specialist asked the vendor for a sandbox account, which the implementation plan allowed for testing. Over three weeks she ran two recent pay periods through the new system in parallel with the existing one. On October 21 she sent the controller a four-page comparison showing that the new system mishandled multistate withholding for workers placed across state lines, about 14 percent of Ostley's placed workforce, and produced incorrect local tax calculations for two cities where Ostley had large placements. Her memo estimated the cost of correcting and refiling at roughly twice the first year's savings. On October 23 the controller forwarded it to the chief financial officer with a one-line note. On October 29 the chief financial officer convened the vendor committee, invited the specialist to present, and the committee recommended amending the contract.

Mechanism

French and Raven (1959) distinguished bases of social power, including legitimate power, which rests on a recognized right to prescribe behavior, and expert power, which rests on others' perception that a person has knowledge they need. The payroll specialist had no legitimate power over the vendor decision. Her expert power was considerable: she had run Ostley's payroll through three system changes and was known to the controller as the person who resolved tax notices. But expert power alone would have produced, at most, a hearing. What moved the decision was the form her expertise took.

Yukl and Falbe (1990) studied the tactics people use to influence superiors, peers and subordinates, and found that consultation and rational persuasion, which argues from facts and reasons, were the tactics used most often whatever the direction of influence. Yukl and Tracey (1992) found rational persuasion to be among the most effective tactics for gaining a target's commitment and the one used most when influencing a boss, while pressure, coalition and legitimating tactics were among the least effective. The specialist used it in an unusually strong form: not an argument that the new system might cause problems, but a parallel run showing exactly which workers' pay would be wrong and what correcting it would cost. Her memo went upward through the controller, who lent it weight by forwarding it. That was not a coalition in Yukl's sense, enlisting others to press the target, which the research rates poorly; the controller simply carried the evidence to the person who could act on it.

What a Positional Account Would Have Predicted

An account of influence based on formal authority would predict that a signed contract, recommended unanimously by a committee and approved by the chief financial officer, would proceed. The people with authority had decided, and the specialist had no standing to reopen the question. The positional account predicts the wrong outcome here, and it fails because it treats the decision as settled by the act of signing rather than by the information the signers had.

Where This Move Stops Working

The mechanism depends on three conditions. The evidence must be concrete and checkable, as a parallel run was; a specialist's warning based on experience alone would likely have been heard and set aside. Someone with legitimate authority must be willing to carry the evidence upward, as the controller was. And the decision must still be reversible at acceptable cost; had the switch already happened, the same evidence would have produced a remediation project rather than a delay. Where any of these conditions is missing, expertise without position tends to be thanked and overruled.

Implication for the Seminar's Argument

The case adds to this term's skepticism about crediting outcomes to those at the top. The decision that protected Ostley's payroll is recorded in the minutes as the committee's.

References

French, J. R. P., Jr., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power (pp. 150-167). University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research.

Yukl, G., & Falbe, C. M. (1990). Influence tactics and objectives in upward, downward, and lateral influence attempts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(2), 132-140. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.75.2.132

Yukl, G., & Tracey, J. B. (1992). Consequences of influence tactics used with subordinates, peers, and the boss. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(4), 525-535. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.77.4.525