Empirical evidence indicates that a significant proportion of employees comply with their superiors' orders, even when they raise moral concerns or result in organizational misconduct. While a growing body of suggests that people's identification with the authority figure as strong predictor of authoritarian obedience, the underlying framing and meaning making processes remain underexplored. Using the example of German and Swiss police authorities, military institutions and university hospitals, the present qualitative interview study (N = 54) analyzed using Grounded Theory examines how employees frame and make meaning of obedience in their everyday working life. Drawing on social identity theorizing the potential impact of occupational dress is considered by comparing uniformed employees (N = 37) and non-uniformed employees (N = 17).


The findings reveal that both uniformed and non-uniformed employees primarily frame obedience to their superior's orders as functional necessity (e.g. as precondition for vocational actionability) and as a normative construct (e.g. obedience as behavioral norm). This reflects how they make meaning of their occupational role whereby "everyone has to contribute their bit to make the big picture a success." This framing highlights the interviewees' authoritarian submissiveness, which translates into a willingness to obey stemming from their hierarchical position. Employees in leadership roles correspondingly interpret it as their responsibility to persuade subordinates of the necessity of following orders. Unlike non-uniformed employees, uniformed employees make use of sanctions or threats of sanctions for this purpose. This This highlights the varying degrees to which uniformed and non-uniformed employees have internalized obedience as a norm. While uniformed employees' willingness tends to be absolute, non-uniformed employees' willingness tends to be conditional due to perceived feelings of ambivalence. These findings emphasize the critical need for tailored leadership development to foster ethical decision-making and cultivate organizational cultures that balance hierarchical expectations with psychological safety for dissent.