We address these questions through a survey of 125 IT
project teams' employment of three persuasion behaviors.
We posit that there are two components to each persuasion
communication: a cognitive and affective (emotional) element
We then employ organizational influence
theory to identify direct persuasion strategies. Cognitive involvement and emotional
involvement mediate the relationship between these persuasion
strategies and management support. We find that emotional
involvement has greater influence than cognitive involvement on
management support. We also find that the rational persuasion and
exchange strategies (which both have an affective component) are
effective for obtaining management support, but personal appeal
is not.