Challenging an Assumption - Positional Authority and Developmental Influence: Rethinking Responsibility for Organizational Culture

By Dr. Christopher Fuzie, Ed.D., M.A.OL, VL2

Introduction

Discussions of organizational culture, particularly toxic organizational culture, frequently begin by examining executive leadership. Within both leadership scholarship and professional practice, senior leaders are appropriately recognized as the individuals responsible for establishing organizational vision, policy, accountability, and the conditions under which culture may develop (Schein & Schein, 2021). Consequently, when organizations experience ethical failures, diminished trust, or toxic workplace environments, responsibility is often directed toward those occupying the highest positions of formal authority.

While executive leadership unquestionably plays a critical role in shaping organizational culture, this emphasis raises an important question. Does focusing primarily on positional leadership overlook the influence of those who interact most frequently with newcomers and help shape their understanding of "how things are really done around here"? This article explores that question by proposing a conceptual distinction between positional authority and developmental influence, suggesting that responsibility for organizational culture may be more broadly distributed throughout an organization than is often acknowledged.

What We Assume

Whenever an organization develops a toxic culture, the conversation almost always begins in the same place: leadership. Police chiefs, Directors, CEO's, presidents, and other senior leaders become the focus of criticism because they establish organizational vision, create policy, allocate resources, determine accountability systems, and ultimately bear responsibility for the direction of the organization (Schein & Schein, 2021). That assumption is understandable because leadership unquestionably influences organizational culture. However, after more than three decades in law enforcement, as a police officer, Field Training Officer (FTO), Field Training Sergeant, Lieutenant, and later teaching supervisory and leadership-followership certification courses, I recently found myself asking a question that challenged my own assumptions about how organizational culture is actually created and sustained.

Can an organization honestly attribute a toxic culture solely to executive leadership if the individuals who exert the greatest developmental influence consistently reinforce that culture every day?

Notice what I'm not suggesting. I'm not claiming that executive leaders are somehow exempt from responsibility, nor am I attempting to shift blame from leaders to followers. Rather, I'm questioning whether our discussions of organizational culture have become so focused on positional authority that we've overlooked another equally important source of organizational influence. Throughout my career, I repeatedly observed that the people who shaped new employees most profoundly were often not the people at the top of the organizational chart, but those who initially trained and worked alongside them every day.

Every organization has a formal hierarchy, and that hierarchy serves an essential purpose. In policing, authority flows through the chain of command from the chief or sheriff to executive staff, supervisors, and ultimately to front-line officers. This structure provides accountability, establishes responsibility, and ensures that organizational objectives are carried out consistently. Without positional authority, organizations would struggle to function effectively. Yet while authority clearly flows downward through the organization, I began wondering whether another type of influence might flow differently.

Positional Authority vs Developmental Influence

Over the years, I found myself thinking about what I now provisionally refer to as developmental influence. By developmental influence, I mean the capacity to shape another person's professional development through training, coaching, mentoring, behavioral modeling, observational learning, correction, and repeated interaction. Unlike positional authority, developmental influence is not necessarily tied to rank. Instead, it appears to emerge through proximity and frequency of interaction with those who are still learning the profession.

Think back to your own first weeks or months in your career. Who taught you how things really worked? Certainly, organizational leaders established the policies and expectations, but who explained the unwritten rules? Who demonstrated how policies were actually interpreted, enforced, or overlooked? Who showed you what professionalism looked like under pressure? Who modeled integrity, discretion, communication, and decision-making? Conversely, who may have demonstrated cynicism, shortcuts, or quietly suggested, "That's not how we really do things around here"? For most professionals, these lessons were learned not from the top of the organizational executives but from the experienced people they worked beside every day.  Some better, some worse.

This observation became increasingly apparent during my years working with Field Training Officers (FTO’s). The job of the FTO is to train the new officer to become competent as a solo beat officer. New officers undoubtedly learned policies, procedures, tactics, and legal standards, but they also learned something far more subtle. They adopted or developed attitudes toward the profession, learned how to exercise judgment, observed how more experienced officers communicated with the public (both positively and negatively), and discovered which behaviors were rewarded, tolerated, or discouraged within the organization. Much of that learning occurred not through formal classroom instruction or policy manuals, but through thousands of hours with the FTO and daily routine interactions with other experienced officers, organizational trainers, and senior members.

What the Research Tells Us

Interestingly, this observation aligns with what organizational researchers have understood for decades. Bandura's (1977, 1986) Social Learning Theory proposes that people acquire behaviors and attitudes by observing others who are significant to you. A Field Training Officer (FTO) is an incredibly significant person in a new police officer’s career. While research on organizational socialization suggests that newcomers develop their understanding of organizational norms largely through interaction with experienced members rather than through formal instruction alone (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). In other words, organizations teach continuously whether they intend to or not. Every coaching conversation, every correction, every ethical/unethical decision, every shortcut, every complaint, every “overlooked” procedure and every demonstration of professionalism communicates something about what the organization truly values. This realization led me to create the conceptual framework shown below.

Diagram 1.1 - Positional Hierarchy vs Developmental Influence Hierarchy - by Dr. Chris Fuzie, Ed.D.

Not a Validated Theory, But a Proposed Conceptual Framework

The purpose of the diagram is not to present a validated theory, but to illustrate a distinction that emerged from years of professional observation. On the left is the familiar Positional Authority Hierarchy, where formal authority increases as one moves upward through the organization. On the right is what I propose as a Developmental Influence Hierarchy, where influence over a newcomer's professional growth appears to increase among those who spend the greatest amount of time teaching, mentoring, coaching, correcting, and modeling organizational behavior. In policing that starts with the FTO. The two hierarchies serve different functions. Executive leaders establish the organization's intended culture, while those with the greatest developmental influence (FTO’s in policing) often determine the actual culture by how that culture is modeled, interpreted, and experienced by newcomers.

We Need To Think More Critically About Culture Causes

This distinction raises several questions that I believe deserve greater consideration. If experienced personnel consistently model professionalism, accountability, integrity, and respect, can they strengthen positive organizational culture despite organizational challenges? Conversely, if experienced personnel repeatedly model cynicism, misconduct, or disengagement, can executive leaders alone prevent those behaviors from becoming part of the culture experienced by new and existing employees? If the people who interact most frequently with newcomers consistently contradict organizational expectations, what culture is ultimately learned?

These questions are not about assigning blame. They are about understanding the true influence that creates organizational culture. Perhaps responsibility for organizational culture is broader than what we have traditionally assumed. Rather than viewing culture as something created exclusively by executives or exclusively by followers, it may be more accurate to view it as something that emerges through the continuous interaction between positional authority and developmental influence. If that is true, organizations seeking to strengthen their culture may need to invest just as intentionally in selecting mentors, trainers, preceptors, and first-line supervisors as they do in selecting executive leaders.

I do not present this as a proven theory, nor do I suggest that these observations resolve the longstanding discussion surrounding organizational culture. Instead, I offer them as a conceptual question that I believe deserves greater attention from both practitioners and researchers. If the individuals with the greatest developmental influence are not always the individuals with the greatest positional authority, perhaps we should reconsider how responsibility for organizational culture is distributed throughout an organization.

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice Hall.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice Hall.

Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2021). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Wiley.

Van Maanen, J., & Schein, E. H. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. In B. M. Staw (Ed.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 1, pp. 209–264). JAI Press.

Author's Note: 

The concept of Developmental Influence and the accompanying Developmental Influence Hierarchy presented in this article are proposed conceptual frameworks developed by the author to encourage discussion and future empirical investigation. They should be understood as conceptual propositions rather than established theoretical constructs.