In this final video, I want to cover a few questions. And the first one I want to cover is, how can industries and organizations avoid getting trapped by myths? And this was posed by Ben Bernard, actually, I really like this question. Because a few of you made responses that really elaborated and provided insights into the theory of the week. Ben wrote, in my field, software development, a methodology called agile software development is now quite prominent. Agile software development began as a rejection of the myth that software should be built with the heavy processes, planning. Upfront design, and detailed contracts that have been inherited from other fields. And instead focused on collaboration, interaction, responsiveness to changing requirements. And producing working software as quickly as possible. So projects and teams, adhering to these agile principles developed alternative processes. That seemed to help them better pursue these goals that establish engineering practices. And Ben goes on to ask, you know I'm wondering, have other seen similar cycles from one myth replacing another? And he assumes, I think in his question, that adopting a myth isn't a good thing necessarily. If you have a rationalized myth it's not supported, per se. And the neat response occurred from Troy and I'm going to read it, too. There are a few I'm going to read today on this third question. And Troy says in my field, the US Army Medicine, the six sigma ideas have been widely hailed as the best thing since sliced bread. He says six sigmas in a operations management philosophy, the basic idea is that every process has a statistical standard deviation, a sigma. And if you can refine the process to the point that six sigmas fall within the range of acceptable outputs. You'll have only one in a million chance that the product, the output is faulty. And he goes on to say, butl what is the standard deviation of a multi trauma patient, or for the wider army? What is the standard deviation of battle? And I can even think of it for schooling. What's the standard deviation of a successful class? So this is the myth, that we have these measurements of best practice or even indicators. And he says it's interesting for me, he says, that rather than avoiding being trapped by myths is how to effectively use them. And he thinks the US army does this very well and he asked if we had thoughts. I think that often this is a mimetic process, mimetic [INAUDIBLE] picks up on this. That you're adopting things that are perceived as legitimate without any kind of focus on the efficiency of them. You assume they're rational, that they do contribute to efficiency. And I think that's the point, that we rotate these things. And Keith tries to paraphrase this, and I think he does an exceptional job. I mean, you deserve big kudos, Keith, because you get it. Says this is a great question, if I have correctly understood neoinstitutional theory it posits. That great institutional success is in part imbued through an adoption of broadly perceived cultural indicators of success. That cognitive controls describes, suggests that if it looks and sounds like a duck, it must be a duck. I think it's look and quack like a duck. [LAUGH] So, using your example, if it is widely understood that agile software development is successful. Firms need to be perceived to be doing agile software development to be successful. There's lots of pomp and show of the trappings of agile software design, and this may not deliver results. Indeed it may inhibit the very creativity and freedom that was supposed to be enabling. But it may nonetheless help the company succeed. So Ong's example, he says a process of transparent procurement is spot on as well. This theory, again, assuming I've understood, you have. Would postulate that it is important that actors perceive your organization as having transparent procurement processes. Especially if this is the culturally expected norm, perception will lead to success. Even potentially in instances where it's in fact, particularly unhelpful. Indeed possibly quite a waste of time and energy, to actually run double blind bidding processes. Then he goes onto say another example might be holding presidential elections in non democratic states. Governments seek legitimacy through culturally accepted indicators of democratic governments. So they hold these elections with great fanfare, but the truth of the elections are rigged, there's no real choice. So Keith, that's a terrific answer. And sorry to bore everyone if you didn't want me to read it. But I thought it was definitely worth reading. Other people go on to talk about, like, Ken, yes, Ken, I am reading and listening, about managerialism as a new logic that's infiltrated nonprofit say. And I think that's true in schooling with the accountability movements. Here we have this notion of choice, of accountability, of free markets. Managerialism entering the development of schooling with the effect on schooling. Here's this myth that we think we'll rationalize, make it better. On the other hand we had in the past this decoupling. And teacher professionalism that we thought would develop more rational efficient systems. And these two logics or two competing institutionalized or rationalized myths are clashing and that's the debate right now. I think this is a reflection of the fact that in the environment there can be multiple public opinions or notions of what is a rational procedure. And so these can appeal to different facets of an organization and try to be adopted. In fact, a lot of organizations try to have legitimacy with different segments of the population. And that's why they appeal, like universities do to not just teaching, but to research, to community outreach, etc. Now, you guys also raised the question about measurements and metrics. As a means to recouple these institutions and to avoid or to get away from rationalized myths. But, I'm not sure that's necessarily a solution. We have to keep in mind that any time we measure things and quantify them we are standardizing them. Into a compatible form that simplifies the reality and information. And by doing that we also ignore other outcomes or processes. So it helps establish a logic of confidence by narrowing our band of focus through a metric. We ignore other things, and a great example is tenure and promotion in universities. Right now you'll see a lot of effort to use the H index or citation indices of faculty. And it's not always a clear reflection of the best faculty, the most talented faculty. Sometimes the most cited works are terrible and they're cited exactly for that reason. Or they're a fluff site, they're not necessarily a substantive site, and on it goes. So we have interpretations of what may be missed by this metric. But it does create a confidence, like if you can say that these are the people we have and they have this kind of citation index. And it's better than Notre Dame or wherever, that we then have this legitimacy. However it's this confidence in the metric, and it's not necessarily the case that captures the complexity of the phenomenon. Or the reality of efficiency and success or the qualities that we're interested in. So I think we have to take it with a grain of salt. It's helpful to some extent but we need to keep in mind that it's only as good as the metric. All right, another thing to also think about in that question, is how complex uncertain environments are. Particularly in modernity, we have all these contradictions in the environment. And rationalized myth is hard to analyze everything endlessly. And the adoption or enactment of of imitating other firms can be a streamlined short circuit effort. It can help you establish legitimacy for your firm and acquire resources in spite of not being as efficient as you'd like. So there are some independent of efficiency, there are these returns of resources that you get from being legitimate. So myths aren't necessarily, or adoption of them isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just not a clear indicator of efficiency and contnet. The fourth question I want to address was written by Carmella. She asked, can an organization exist in an environment with a different value system? A lot of you guys mentioned of course it ca. There are revolutionaries and innovating firms that don't fit, like SANTI-ENDRA and IVAN and so on. Other say, well the environment changes and the regime does not fit. Which is actually more consistent with institutional theory, that's Vernon who mentions this. That the environment changes and these firms don't mirror it culturally. Now Morton says that organizations adapt with organizational forms or formal structures. Which have legitimacy in them but they don't necessarily adapt their content. So what it means is that all these firms are conforming ceremonially in terms of their formal structure. But none internally in terms of their content or technology. I think talks about this too reinforces it. When I think about charter schools or private schools or for profit schools. They're all similar in form to a public school or high school or elementary school. But their content and technology can be somewhat different. So they can be a maverick in practice, but not necessarily in the ceremonial constructs that we think is legitimate for a school. There's a nice piece that would be worth exploring for you though, if you're interested in this. It was written by Damon Phillips and Ezra Zuckerman in 2001. Of the American Journal of Sociology where they talk about middle status conformity. And the argument here is that conformity is highest when you have middle ground status. When you're at the top of the field, like a Stanford that has high status. Has legitimacy by its status and it can afford to break with other norms. So it can be a maverick in some regard. On the other hand, if you're at the bottom of the status hierarchy, you don't get any rewards from this identity. You can deviate even further as opposed to just doing it even one step better by innovating as a maverick at the top. At the bottom it's rebel against the system in general, you don't need it to do something quite distinctive. So I think it's feasible that you can have these kinds of innovations, and there are theories about it. Typically though the institutional view is that you match. And it's not quite as dynamic as we'd like and that's why I went into the framing. And I think a lot of you are catching onto the fact that firms do innovate. Particularly with content even though they may buffer their formal organizations on the outside in these ways. So, you can appeal to distinct elements in the environment, you can appeal to distinct opinions or segments. So, your organization can have a differentiated structure, I think was also something we talked about. Segmenting your structure and then appealing to multiple rationalized myths, may be feasible for a lot of firms. So, I don't want you to think that it's always just one. The final question that I'm going to address was about corporate responsibilities or rationalized myth and this is one that Juan asked. And he said, if we consider corporate social responsibility it's seems to be a rationalized myth that people are using as a ceremonial display. And I think there's some validity to that claim. That Troy, Ramon, you guys say well of course it is, it's not central to the function of each organization. To do this social responsible behavior, it's more window dressing and a side task. That's amplified to get public empathy and support, and legitimacy in that dimension of more legitimacy, let's say. [COUGH] Others of you were less skeptical. You saw it as anyone who investigated the CSR policies, or the corporate social responsibility policies of the different firms. That you would quickly understand that some firms go beyond the myth and are ready to question organizational routines. To find their own way to produce and interact in a more responsible way, and this was Julia's thinking. I also think Martha saw this too, she said the outside environment can call a company to task if they just do it as window dressing. So, there is something like that going on, and I think it's true that CSR has spread, too. It's diffused, and a couple of anonymous posts mentioned this. That it's spread across all of corporate America and elsewhere in Europe and beyond. And so the thing is that there's some kind of skepticism of whether it's real and substantive. My wonder is whether even if it is ceremonial, whether that entails something. And the kind of example I'm thinking about is when we change our language, our rhetoric. And the case United States is 30 years ago we used to write everything, he said blah. And today we say he or she or she and we rotate. In an effort to have gender equity in our pronoun usage so that it doesn't privilege one gender. So it sounds silly, it sounds like it's just window dressing, but in some ways, I think it actually runs a little deeper. I think it did change people's assumptions, and their beliefs, and presuppositions about genders. And I think there's something to that. And whether the form that we change if we do adopt window dressings maybe. That maybe they run somewhere into the content to them extent. I don't think they're completely decoupled. In fact, a lot of organizations lack that decoupling. So, I think that's something to think about, whether they amplify corporate social responsibility. The point where it's kind of a joke like the Chevron example. That's another matter and we should call them out on it. But nonetheless this is very interesting. I think it's fair to use neoinstitutional theory to think about these phenomena. So these have been wonderful questions this week. There are many others but I've already probably recorded over an hour of screen side chats this time and I want to be conscious of your time. So thank you, we have one more week of lectures and I will try to do one final screen side chat next week. And, then we have the final. So, look to see you on the forum, thanks.
