Prof. Daniel Geiger
Chair for Organization Studies
University of Hamburg,Germany
COR Visiting Fellow
“Break the Rule?! A Practice-Perspective on Organizational Rule-Following and Rule-Breaking in Extreme Contexts”
Friday, October 24 2014
12:00-1:30pm
SBSG 1321
Light lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to cor@uci.edu by October 21.
“Break the Rule?! A Practice-Perspective on Organizational Rule-Following and Rule-Breaking in Extreme Contexts”
Abstract
This paper explores the practices and dynamics of organizational rule-following and rule-breaking in the context of a high reliability organization which is confronted with highly uncertain and dynamic settings. High-reliability organizations have to balance the need for reliability with the ability to flexibly respond to the Unexpected. Practices such as role shifting, reorganizing routines or improvisation have been identified as critical in this regard. The question, however, how these practices related to the bureaucratic rules has not deserved much attention yet. Building on an ethnographic study of a firefighting unit in an urban environment, this paper contributes to our understanding of the practices of organizational rule-following and rule breaking. Whilst rule-breaking was critical and rather the normality than the exception, the study identified four distinct yet interrelated practices: Tolerating, leading to small breaches of rules which are noticed but accepted. Normalizing, resulting in an unnoticed drift in rule-following which may be practical but eventually leads into dangerous, irreversible states. Practicing useable illegality points to the need to break rules in order to achieve intended outcomes. Base-lining refers to the flexible use of rules without breaking This contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of rule-following and rule-breaking; it suggests possibilities to inject flexibility and constrains in bureaucratic organizations and offers a corrective to the overreliance on formal rules in high-reliability organizations. Finally, it points to the paradoxical nature of organizational rules, thereby contributing to our understanding of the relationship between organizational practices and organizational rules.