HBR IdeaCast

The Right Way to Manage Rule Breakers

23 min

Michael Gill, an associate professor at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School, discusses his research on rule breaking in organizations, which reveals that not all rule breaking is negative. He identifies four types of rule breakers—self-interested, pro-social, corrupted, and edified—and advises leaders to understand motivations before reacting, warning against default punishment and suggesting curiosity, pattern analysis, and rule revision as better approaches.

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✨ Key Takeaways

1

65% of employees globally observed misconduct at work in 2023, up from 60% in 2020, with over half in the US reporting rule breaking, indicating an increasing trend.
2

Four types of rule breaking exist: self-interested (for personal gain), pro-social (to help others), corrupted (due to pressure/coercion), and edified (for a higher purpose), challenging the common assumption that all rule breaking is bad.
3

Leaders should default to understanding motivations rather than punishment; pro-social or edified rule breaking often signals outdated or ill-fitting rules that need revision.
4

Senior leaders can reduce harmful rule breaking by being transparent about their own mistakes and spending time on the front line to understand why rules may be broken for positive reasons.
5

Effective management of rule breaking requires creating psychological safety for employees to discuss rule violations, looking for patterns across teams or repeated issues, and revisiting rules that no longer fit operational realities.

💬 Notable Quotes

"If you have talented and committed employees, employees you really value, but they keep breaking a rule or the same rules, they are sending you a really strong signal. That is likely to indicate some sort of tension between what they're being asked to do every day and the structures of your organization."
"The first thing to do is really understand the motivation behind the behavior."
"My view would be probably not to encourage rule breaking but to be really sensitive to when it does happen and to try and revisit the rules to understand when those rules are not fit for purpose."