Kiss-Up-Kick-Down to Get Ahead: A Resource Perspective on How, When, Why, and With Whom Middle Managers Use Ingratiatory and Exploitative Behaviours to Advance Their Careers

There are myriad organizational anecdotes about middle managers who advance their careers by ingratiating themselves with their superiors while exploiting and abusing their subordinates. We formally define this behavioural combination as the Kiss-Up-Kick-Down (KUKD) phenomenon and develop a resource-focused framework that not only explains when middle managers will engage in KUKD, but also how such behaviour helps their career progression via three resource-related pathways: One path involving sponsorship resource gains from superiors, another path involving productive resource gains from subordinates, and an intra-individual path related to middle managers' own psychological resources. Staying within the resource framework, we theorize that superiors and subordinates become likely targets of KUKD when the former is resource-poor and the latter is resource-rich. Finally, we deliberate on the role of time as a crucial boundary condition: not only in terms of when middle managers engage in KUKD behaviours, but also how such actions involve diminishing returns.

Automated summary

The study defines the Kiss-Up-Kick-Down (KUKD) phenomenon and proposes a resource-focused framework to explain how this behavior helps middle managers in their career progression. The research identifies three pathways through which these managers benefit, including sponsorship resource gains from superiors, productive resource gains from subordinates, and intra-individual gains from psychological resources. Furthermore, the study suggests that superiors and subordinates are likely to be targeted when the former lacks resources and the latter is resource-rich. Time is also discussed as a crucial boundary condition in terms of when and how KUKD behaviors lead to diminishing returns.