Organizational structures on the beauty parade—imitations and shop-window dressing

As we have seen, an excessive interest in change—or at least the initiation of more or less well-considered projects—is closely linked to a high degree of sensitivity for what people think others are doing. As there are frequent mass media reports about the strong need for change and organizations are often engaged in various change activities, it is vital to keep up—both with the general norm and with the signalled moves of others. The risk of deviating and, in particular, falling behind is a major motive force. A key factor here is the surface—what seems to be visible from a distance and without much deeper knowledge—in an organizational and management context. This chapter focuses on the links between these aspects, in which imitations and fashions have a particularly high impact at the shop-window level (i.e., the illusion level), and where an increasing emphasis on the shop-window factor encourages imitations and fashion-following behaviour. This chapter then takes the phenomenon of imitation seriously. But even if the desire to keep up with norms and fashions and the fear of lagging behind other organizations—in general or in one’s sector—play a role, how significant is it? It may only have a moderate impact, compared with efficiency concerns, for example. And surely responsible executives, politicians, and other policymakers are strong, independent, reasonably thoughtful, and rational actors, who generally have good reasons for their decisions and the organizational structures they are responsible for? Or is the almost caricature-like view of organizations as almost slavishly following fashions ‘true’? No precise answers are possible, but research and insightful observations by respected commentators may give important material for informed reasoning. In this chapter, I start with the phenomenon of imitation and convergence between organizations by exploring the impact of adapting new formal structures in organizations within a certain sector. There are reasons to believe that imitation of ‘leaders’ and following fashion are far from insignificant. Then this is related to the issue of the ‘depth’ of such imitation tendencies, where the window-dressing aspects are emphasized.