“anti-hierarchy” environment in an organization
Do you think it’s possible for an organization to deliberately create an “anti-hierarchy” to encourage employees to engage in acts of creative deviance? What steps might a company take to encourage creative deviance?
I think is it very hard to deliberately create an “anti-hierarchy” environment in an organization, but it is not impossible.
The first step is to ensure that the organization’s culture supports and encourages creative deviance. This, in and of itself, is a challenge. Every organization leadership understands that unity of command and chain of command is highly important to achieve set performance goals. This dilemma creates a fine line between the phenomenon of “creative deviance” and simple disregard to “acceptance theory of authority”. The lines get blurred and confusion sets in different organizational units without proper management and direction of any creative thinking.
Another way to encourage creative deviance is create a contemporary organizational design that inspires it. Team structure, boundaryless structure, matrix-project structure, and learning structure can promote the idea of “thinking outside the box” and innovate where innovation is not really expected. Such environments are highly flexible and responsive and strive best in less mechanistic and more organic organizations. It is that sharing of the knowledge throughout the organization that creates sustainable source of competitive advantage.
What are the drawbacks of an approach that encourages creative deviance?
Creative deviance is great when it “strikes gold” and brings the company much needed competitive advantage and high revenues. 3M is the great example of that with all of its innovative products. But what if those “stars” and “question marks” from BCG Matrix never become more than just that??? Then the employees have wasted valuable company resources deviating into something completely not profitable.
Creative deviance is also very hard to manage or police. Once
I think is it very hard to deliberately create an “anti-hierarchy” environment in an organization, but it is not impossible.
The first step is to ensure that the organization’s culture supports and encourages creative deviance. This, in and of itself, is a challenge. Every organization leadership understands that unity of command and chain of command is highly important to achieve set performance goals. This dilemma creates a fine line between the phenomenon of “creative deviance” and simple disregard to “acceptance theory of authority”. The lines get blurred and confusion sets in different organizational units without proper management and direction of any creative thinking.
Another way to encourage creative deviance is create a contemporary organizational design that inspires it. Team structure, boundaryless structure, matrix-project structure, and learning structure can promote the idea of “thinking outside the box” and innovate where innovation is not really expected. Such environments are highly flexible and responsive and strive best in less mechanistic and more organic organizations. It is that sharing of the knowledge throughout the organization that creates sustainable source of competitive advantage.
What are the drawbacks of an approach that encourages creative deviance?
Creative deviance is great when it “strikes gold” and brings the company much needed competitive advantage and high revenues. 3M is the great example of that with all of its innovative products. But what if those “stars” and “question marks” from BCG Matrix never become more than just that??? Then the employees have wasted valuable company resources deviating into something completely not profitable.
Creative deviance is also very hard to manage or police. Once