Influence Management training in Bern · canton of BerneManaging through influence in the canton of Berne: how can consultation be credible without decision-making authority?
In the canton of Berne, federal administration, public health, telecommunications and precision industry form an environment where influence often crosses professional and institutional boundaries, with particularly strong transparency requirements under public mandates. For SHR's “Managing through influence” programme, this raises a question: how can managers organise an honest consultation when another body holds decision-making authority?
1. What the literature establishes: having a voice matters
Robert Folger (1977, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) experimentally examines the opportunity to express one's views when facing an inequitable allocation. His study shows that this opportunity can alter reactions to inequity, without being equivalent to an improvement in the outcome received. It encourages a distinction between a decision's outcome and the procedure leading to it.
2. A mechanism: procedures signal one's standing in the group
Tom R. Tyler and Steven L. Blader (2003, Personality and Social Psychology Review) propose a model connecting procedural justice, social identity and cooperation. How people are treated provides information about their recognition and standing within a group. For a cross-functional manager, listening without holding decision-making authority may therefore have relational value, provided that listening is not presented as a transfer of power.
3. The premature conclusion: consultation does not legitimise everything
It would be an overstatement to conclude that consultation alone secures acceptance of an unfavourable decision. Allowing people to speak, examining their contributions and letting them decide are three different commitments. A credible process specifies what remains open, what has already been settled and who will decide. (our executive and employee training programmes)
4. The limits: perceived fairness is not a compliance check
Folger's experiment does not reproduce the legal and institutional responsibilities of an organisation in Berne, while Tyler and Blader's model is a theoretical synthesis rather than a local evaluation. These articles prove neither that consultation improves every decision nor that it fulfils transparency obligations. In a bilingual environment such as Biel/Bienne, making contributions accessible in the working languages is also a practical precaution, not an effect established by these articles.
5. A practical check in Berne
Consider a hypothetical example in Berne: someone coordinates consultation on an equipment maintenance procedure in a public health institution, without authority over either technical services or senior management. Before consultation begins, the coordinator records what can be changed and which body will decide; a subsequent register documents each proposal's status, the reason for its treatment and the person responsible for responding, while respecting confidentiality. At closure, the coordinator measures the proportion of proposals with a reasoned response accessible to contributors: this indicator checks the consultation's traceability, not agreement with the decision. To go further: explore the Influence Management training in Bern in the canton of Bern, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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