Motivation

History offers numerous examples of change that seems to appear out of nowhere, often going unnoticed until it has a surprising and significant impact.  Unfortunately, this impact can sometimes be devastating, as in the case of NASA’s tragic Challenger disaster.  Vaughan (1997) shows how the catastrophic accident resulted, at least in part, from the engineers tolerating greater-and-greater levels of risk, with the result that there was a gradual erosion of the institutionalized obsession with safety.  However, sometimes the impact of such change may be positive. This is illustrated in Leung, Zietsma, and Peredo’s (2014) study of how Japanese housewives transformed and enlarged their gender roles in the family by starting a social enterprise that provided better food for their families.  In both of these cases, the outcomes – one negative, one positive — were unintended, a consequence from unintended changes over time in the institutional rules, roles, and expectations.  Thinking about these and other examples got us to wonder: How can institutional change come about unintentionally and in spite of people’s attempts to maintain the status quo?  Our research published in the Journal of Management Studies offers an answer.

Expanding institutionalized behaviors through small deviations and their tolerance

The theory of institutional drift describes a process whereby institutionalized or scripted behaviors expand through small deviations in interactional practices that then accumulate over time to precipitate institutional change.  Our theory builds on research suggesting that social solidarity, mutual obligations, and even politeness, motivate people to try to maintain the smooth flow of social interactions, even when there are mundane deviations.

There are two interrelated mechanisms that drive institutional drift: The first is practice deviation, by a person acting in a manner that is inconsistent with the expectations of their role. These deviations can range from minor modifications to more substantive – and even radical – departures.  The second is tolerance of the practice deviation by others, which often occurs automatically and unconsciously.  There are two possibilities for how tolerance is judged. First, if the deviation is unnoticed, it results in trivial or no change. For instance, in their study of a Japanese sushi bar, Yamauchi and Hiramoto (2020) offer several examples of a sushi chef deviating from prescribed behavior while interacting with customers. However, none of these deviations result in a breakdown of the social order due to the ability of both the chef and the customers to adapt and improvise in a way that maintains mutual intelligibility. Such oddities are unlikely to lead to institutional transformation.

Secondly, a deviation may be ignored because it seems compatible, or is normalized to be compatible, with institutional ideals.  For example, managers may ignore or normalize a deviating behavior of front-line employees in retail because it is a harmless way to make the employees’ jobs more satisfying and motivating.  Here, tolerance of the deviation leads to institutional drift because the expansion of the prescribed role behavior is marginal.  For example, managers might allow front-line employees greater authority over more traditionally “managerial” or “strategic” tasks. As such, institutional drift does not necessarily lead to radical institutional change, but instead can lead to gradual yet significant institutional transformation. Yet, this can be consequential. Returning to the example of Vaughan’s (1997) Challenger disaster study, we saw that moving away from institutionalized safety protocols was accomplished not through strategic de-institutionalization of safety measures, but through normalization of ever-greater deviations from typified practices. In other words, institutional drift leads to institutional change by altering the repertoire of practices associated with certain roles, thus redefining the shared understandings of acceptable and normal practice.

Change in the absence of contestation

Imperfect enactments of institutionalized expectations are inescapable and sometimes are collectively rendered tolerable; this tolerance is necessary to restore the fluidity of social interactions. As a result, institutions are inevitably in flux. Thus, institutional change is not only possible without strategic intent, but is seeded in ongoing enactments and deviations between people; when such deviations go unnoticed, ignored or normalized, the latter two result in institutional drift. Our article proposes several factors that increase the likelihood of both practice deviations, and more importantly, of those practice deviations being tolerated by others.

The literature on institutional change is dominated by strategic theories that attribute institutional stability to vigilant institutional maintenance and work and, conversely, attribute institutional change to effective mobilization against the status quo. In contrast, we suggest an alternative path of institutional change – drift – that occurs when practice deviations are ignored or normalized, rather than sanctioned.  In times of environmental stability, deviations are especially likely to be seen as nonthreatening and ignored. The resulting drift implies that institutional change can occur even in the absence of overt contestation. Thus, mundane practice deviations should not be seen as necessarily trivial, and their contribution to institutional change should be appreciated.

We expect that practice deviations are more likely to be unnoticed or ignored, when they are more peripheral – that is less obviously related to the institutional ideals.  This occurred when Japanese housewives’ business pursuits did not seem to threaten the “dutiful housewife” ideal (Leung et al., 2014), and their role shifted. Yet, when a substantial number of people engage in such deviations, the associated institutional drift is more likely to lead to substantial institutional change. More generally, when deviations are not perceived to be threatening to the social order, they are more likely to be adopted; as a result, institutional drift can ensue.

Full article can be accessed here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/joms.12765

References

Leung, A., Zietsma, C. and Peredo, A. M. (2014). ‘Emergent identity work and institutional change: the’quiet’revolution of japanese middle-class housewives’. Organization Studies, 35, 423-50.

Vaughan, D. (1997). ‘The Trickle-Down Effect: Policy decisions, risky work, and the challenger tragedy.’. California Management Review, 39, 80-102.

Yamauchi, Y. and Hiramoto, T. (2020). ‘Performative Achievement of Routine Recognizability: An Analysis of Order Taking Routines at Sushi Bars’. Journal of Management Studies, 57, 1610-42.