University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Dissertations and Theses @ UNI Student Work 2013 Where loyalties lie: A study of workplace dissent through the lens of loyalty Katelyn L. Santy University of Northern Iowa Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy Copyright ©2013 Katelyn L. Santy Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd Part of the Human Resources Management Commons Recommended Citation Santy, Katelyn L., "Where loyalties lie: A study of workplace dissent through the lens of loyalty" (2013). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 544. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/544 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses @ UNI by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WHERE LOYAL TIES LIE: A STUDY OF WORKPLACE DISSENT THROUGH THE LENS OF LOYALTY An Abstract of a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Katelyn L. Santy University of Northern Iowa May 2013 ABSTRACT This thesis studied organizational dissent through the lens of loyalty in order to examine the nuanced motivations of employees' choices to dissent. The goal of this work was to approach loyalty as a nuanced concept that provides a foundational motivation for employees' dissent. In order to understand the contextualized experience of dissent, I conducted individual interviews with 17 employees in the radiology department of a healthcare organization. I adopted a grounded theory approach to data analysis, yielding a series of major findings.