Punctuated incongruity: A new approach to managing trade-offs between conformity and deviation

Patil, Shefali V.

doi:10.1016/j.riob.2014.08.002

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 198 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As suggested Figure 10. Experiment 3: Absolute difference from ideal predictions over trials earlier, organizations lie on a continuum from low to high standardization, and the degree to which decision rules are formalized is contingent on such factors as the nature of the task itself (Eisenhardt, 1989) and work culture (Patil & Tetlock, 2014). In order to cope with dynamic environments, organizations in reality need to enact some degree of standardization while allowing some room for individual judgment (e.g., Adler & Borys, 1996;Bigley & Roberts, 2001;Brady, 1987).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Decision makers often have to decide whether to conform to or deviate from decision rules-standard practices that organizations prescribe to reduce inconsistencies and cognitive biases (Davis & Kottemann, 1995;Sieck & Arkes, 2005;Yates, Veinott, & Patalano, 2003). The decision to conform or deviate is not easy, especially in dynamic environments that rapidly alternate between periods of change and stability (Patil & Tetlock, 2014). When task environments change, decision rules may no longer be useful (Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996;Payne, 1976;Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1988).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In these types of work environments, decision makers may wind up oscillating between errors, slammed back and forth for their most recent error in a ping-pong blame game (Tetlock & Mellers, 2011a). The danger here is that decision makers never learn to become better discerners of task demands or to make appropriate trade-offs between conformity and deviation (Patil & Tetlock, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Accountability Systems and Group Norms: Balancing the Risks of Mindless Conformity and Reckless Deviation

Patil

Mellers

2016

Behavioral Decision Making

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In dynamic task environments, decision makers are vulnerable to two types of errors: sticking too closely to the rules (excessive conformity) or straying too far from them (excessive deviation). We explore the effects of process and outcome accountability on the susceptibility to these errors. Using a multiple-cue probability-learning task, we show that process accountability encourages conformity errors and outcome accountability promotes deviation errors. Two additional studies explore the moderating effects of self-focused and other-focused group norms. Self-focused norms reduce the effect of process accountability on excessive conformity. Other-focused norms reduce the effect of outcome accountability on excessive deviation. Our results qualify prevailing claims about the benefits of process over outcome accountability and show that those benefits hinge on prevailing group norms, on the effectiveness of prescribed decision rules, and on the amount of irreducible uncertainty in the prediction task.

show abstract

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Accountability Systems and Group Norms: Balancing the Risks of Mindless Conformity and Reckless Deviation

Patil

Mellers

2016

Behavioral Decision Making

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, a manager could create either outcome transparency, process/activity transparency, or both (see the "Focus" column in Table 2). In recent research comparing outcome and process transparency, scholars have found that, relative to process transparency, outcome transparency can provide employees more privacy and therefore room to be innovative and creative rather than compliant-more exploration, less exploitation (Patil & Tetlock, 2014). As managers try to balance the risks of "mindless conformity" (pure exploitation) and "reckless deviation" (pure exploration) in the workplace (Patil, Tetlock, & Mellers, 2016), carefully balancing outcome and process transparency may be a helpful managerial lever.…”

Section: Studying the Impact Of Various Forms Of Transparency/privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Transparency Transparent: The Evolution of Observation in Management Theory

Bernstein¹

2017

ANNALS

169

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Observation is key to management scholarship and practice. Yet a holistic view of its role in management has been elusive, in part due to shifting terminology. The current popularity of the term "transparency" provides the occasion for a thorough review, which finds (a) a shift in the object of observation from organizational outcomes to the detailed individual activities within them; (b) a shift from people observing the technology to technology observing people; and (c) a split in the field, with managers viewing observation almost entirely from the observer's perspective, leaving the perspective of the observed to the realm of scholarly methodology courses and philosophical debates on privacy. I suggest how the literature on transparency and related literatures might be improved with research designed in light of these trends.KEYWORDS: transparency, privacy, performance, organizations, management theory ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I thank Julie Battilana, Ethan Burris, Tim Earle, Amy Edmondson, John Elder, Elizabeth Hansen, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Joshua Margolis, Tsedal Neeley, Nitin Nohria, Shefali Patil, Kathy Qu, Ryan Raffaelli, Lakshmi Ramarajan, and Bradley Staats for feedback on prior versions of this work; Jim Detert, Sim Sitkin, and two anonymous reviewers for insightful and developmental feedback; and the Harvard Business School for financial support.Please cite as: Bernstein, E. S. Making transparency transparent: The evolution of observation in management theory. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1): 217-266. 2We are increasingly observed and observing at work. Fifty years ago, a typical manager might have tracked production, revenue, and expenses against budget and periodically observed workers during in-person audits (e.g., Dalton, 1959). Today, advances in technology, from smart cameras to wearable tracking devices, make possible a kind of real-time "SuperVision" (Gilliom & Monahan, 2012) far beyond any level of observability envisioned 50 years ago or when Frederick Taylor (1911) originally promoted managerial oversight through scientific management.Public attention is captured by extreme examples of observation at work, like handheld computers (Amazon) or wearable bands (Tesco) tracking and optimizing employees' every move (Head, 2014;Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015;Rawlinson, 2013), embedded sensors in large fleets of company-owned trucks (e.g., UPS) recording hundreds of measurements to capture every action of the truck and its driver to unearth and enforce time-saving tactics (Goldstein, 2014;Levy, 2015), cameras at Las Vegas casino Harrah's tracking the smiles of card dealers and wait staff as a proxy for customer service quality (Peck, 2013), point-of-sale systems scraping every transaction for signs of employee fraud (Pierce, Snow, & McAfee, 2015), and RFID (radiofrequency identification)-enabled workspaces automatically capturing factory worker progress (Ranganathan, 2015), how long employees spend at their desks (Zillman, 2016), and even who does and does not use hand-soap and hand-sanitizer dispensers ...

show abstract

“…Related concepts include Schumpeterian notions of 'creative destruction', transformational states and renewal(Chakravarthy and Doz, 1992[313]; Pascale, 1999[88]). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Means, ends and meaning in accountability for strategic education governance

Fahey¹,

Köster²

2019

OECD Education Working Papers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This working paper was prepared by Glenn Fahey and Florian Köster at the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills. It lays the groundwork for developing tools that help education systems systematically improve their accountability arrangements. It is part of the Strategic Education Governance project at the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). The Strategic Education Governance (SEG) project supports countries in identifying the best ways to achieve national objectives for education systems in a context of multi-level governance structures and complex environments. It identifies and promotes effective governance processes in the realms of accountability, capacity, knowledge governance, stakeholder involvement, strategic thinking and a whole-of-system perspective.

show abstract

Punctuated incongruity: A new approach to managing trade-offs between conformity and deviation

Cited by 23 publications

References 198 publications

Accountability Systems and Group Norms: Balancing the Risks of Mindless Conformity and Reckless Deviation

Accountability Systems and Group Norms: Balancing the Risks of Mindless Conformity and Reckless Deviation

Making Transparency Transparent: The Evolution of Observation in Management Theory

Means, ends and meaning in accountability for strategic education governance

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About