Canton Ticino — Managing through influence: how can managers consult without merely simulating participation?

In Canton Ticino, banking, fashion, trading businesses and Italian-speaking family SMEs operate alongside one another, while proximity to Lombardy encourages connections with the Italian market and cross-border employment. For SHR’s “Managing through influence” programme, this raises a precise question: how can managers invite contributions when some constraints are already fixed, without presenting a settled decision as an open one?

What the literature establishes

Gary Yukl and J. Bruce Tracey (1992, Journal of Applied Psychology) observe that consultation is among the influence tactics associated with stronger commitment to a request. Here, consultation means involving someone in developing or implementing a proposal, rather than simply asking them to approve it. This association does not, however, prove that adding consultation will, by itself, produce stronger commitment.

Having a voice is not the same as having decision authority

Robert Folger (1977, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) experimentally examines how the opportunity to express a view and an improvement in an allocation influence experienced inequity. The study separates two dimensions that are often conflated: having a voice in the procedure and obtaining a more favourable outcome. For a manager, the distinction matters: hearing an objection, changing a proposal and delegating a decision are three different actions.

The premature conclusion

It would be tempting to conclude that more consultation is all that better influence requires. That conclusion is premature: an invitation to contribute can create ambiguity if managers do not specify what remains open to change. In a hypothetical Italian-speaking family SME, for example, the owner might have fixed a launch date while leaving the team to organise the work; consultation should explicitly concern that organisation, not a date already settled. (our executive and employee training programmes)

What the evidence cannot guarantee

The influence-tactics study draws on assessments collected in organisations, whereas the inequity experiment addresses a bounded allocation situation. Neither specifically measures practices in Ticino or demonstrates that formalised consultation consistently improves decisions. In practice, proficiency in the working language, cross-border workers’ availability and proximity to senior management are conditions of access to consultation worth examining, not established local effects.

A practical check in Lugano

As an exercise in the “Managing through influence” programme, a team based in Lugano could test a consultation sheet on a real decision, recording fixed constraints, elements open to change and the person responsible for deciding. In a hypothetical bank, fashion business or trading company, each contribution would then be linked to a change, a reasoned rejection or an assessment still in progress. Over a period specified in advance, measuring the proportion of contributions receiving a reasoned response and separately recording those that actually changed the decision would make consultation traceable, without treating that traceability as evidence of commitment. To go further: explore the Influence Management training in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.

In pictures: Influence Management in Lugano

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