If the software developers perceive the coding standard to be nit-picking and aimed at minor or unimportant details of the code, they see it more as a hindrance than a help. At first they might complain about the hair-splitting rules, but if the quality manager persists with his coding standard, they'll give up and seemingly accept the guidelines. The acceptance is only pretend to get the quality manager off their backs. The developers won't follow the standard anyway. To them it is meaningless. The coding standard becomes shelf-ware.

If the quality manager forces the developers to follow an unimportant coding standard, they do it in the slowest possible way imaginable. They go to impossible lengths to follow the unimportant rules to the letter. Wasting time and effort seems a justified protest for the obligation to follow the pedantic rules. Malign acceptance is very wasteful. As a silent protest it is often a more effective in destroying any intended value of the quality activity than all-out subordination. With subordination you at least have a clear problem to attend to. With unexpressed resentment, you notice the problem only indirectly through missing results. A mandatory code inspection revolving around minimal issues in code is far from the kind of process we should be aiming for.

Psychology is an important subject in examining the shortcomings of any process involving people. Chapter 2. "Symptoms" makes stabs at it with minimal expertise. The described situations should be real enough to understand and sympathize with.