Objective: While organizational policies are formulated as coordination tools, their linguistic ambiguity and drafting style can transform them from a final authority into a catalyst for protest behavior. This study aims to explore the mediating role of organizational policy language in shaping protest reactions and to explain how textual ambiguities transition into interpretive and behavioral tensions between employees and managers.



Methodology: This research employed a qualitative approach and a case study strategy, focusing on the employment regulations of non-academic staff at the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology. Data were collected through document analysis and semi-structured interviews. To analyze the data, an "Oppositional Matrix" strategy was utilized to identify conflicting semantic patterns, and the validity of the findings was ensured through the "Member Checking" technique.



Findings: Analysis of the legal provisions revealed that linguistic ambiguity manifests in three primary clusters: "discretionary" (the term may), "conditional" (budgetary conditions), and "referential" (referring to future guidelines). These ambiguities create a contradiction between the perceptions of employees and managers, fostering interpretive gaps that trigger protest reactions.



Conclusion: The results indicate that linguistic ambiguity can erode the legitimacy of managerial decisions in the eyes of employees, converting cognitive dissatisfaction into overt protest action. Therefore, linguistic transparency and the "textual purification" of policies are strategic imperatives for rebuilding trust and preventing organizational conflict