Steven F. Freeman
The problem of identity in organizational behavior and human decision processes
John Carroll (chair), Lotte Bailyn, Maureen Scully, and John Van Maanen
1998 Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ph.D. dissertation.
The dissertation began as an attempt to
explain why it took the American auto industry so long to respond to Japanese
advances in design and production. I developed a methodology and database for
measuring organizational attention based on lineage in official documents. The
thesis consists of four essays: Chapter (2) reports what Chrysler and GM paid
attention for a 25-year period, concluding that they attended primarily to
threats made widely public on mass media, while ignoring those that had been
quietly transforming their industry. Chapter (3) documents how once the threat
was acknowledged, several other impediments to change ensued. I observe through
case studies and literature review remarkable similarities between resistance to
change on the individual and organizational level.
To explain both attention patterns and resistance to change, I utilize theories of identity and structural niches. In chapter (1), I explore different understandings of how identities and group identifications emerge and how they affect decision-making, attention, and change. The "problem of identity" is that identity under stress is often little more than a loosely coupled collection of conflicting impulses. In chapter (4), I try to explain why my findings and others deviate from economic rationality. I review and analyze the wide discrepancy between prescriptive decision theory, ethics, and actual behavior. I then explain empirical findings from an evolutionary perspective.