Insubordination

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Insubordination is the act of a subordinate deliberately disobeying a lawful order. Insubordination is typically a punishable offence in hierarchical organizations which depend on people lower in the chain of command to do as they are told. The term does not cover behaviours like bad work ethics, voicing complaints, or refusing to perform an action that is not safe, ethical, or legal.

The concept of insubordination is most often associated with military organizations, as military organizations have a chain of command and lawful orders given by a commissioned officer (CO) or non commissioned officer(NCO), whose orders are expected to be carried out by the person to whom the order is given. Refusal of a military officer to obey his (civilian) superiors would also count, though in some nations the head of the government is (at least technically) also the most superior officer of the military (see for example Commander in Chief in the US).

Other types of hierarchical structures, especially corporations, may also use insubordination as a reason for dismissal or censure of an employee.

[edit] In the economy

In the modern workplace in the Western world, the organizational culture is usually sufficiently relaxed and unmilitary so that the issue of insubordination rarely arises formally. The power relationships in the modern workplace are less obvious and are sometimes inverted when employees with special and essential skills are so valuable to the organization that what would be considered insubordination in other cases is overlooked or at least no overt action is taken.

There have been a number of court cases which have involved charges of insubordination from the employer with counter charges of infringement of First Amendment rights from the employee. A number of these cases have reached the U.S. Supreme Court usually involving a conflict between an institution of higher education and a faculty member.