Monitoring of Standard Enactment for Exploration and Exploitation

In this chapter, Sarah Langer and Andrea Fried reflect on the relationship between standards and innovation. They observe how studies of the relationship between standards and innovation show contradictory results; standards can both enable and constrain innovation. There are several reviews that deal with the question of the standard–innovation nexus and come to the same conclusion that the results are not satisfactory thus far. By identifying reflexive, diagnostic, self-monitoring, and inadequate ways of monitoring standard enactment, the standard–innovation nexus can be explained in a novel way. The authors suggest that the way in which organizations monitor deviations from standards influences whether their organizational processes are explorative or exploitative in nature. The chapter concludes with propositions for further research.

Non-Regulated Deviance from Standards at MetroEngineers

With the case study MetroEngineers, Sarah Langer, Ronny Gey, Diana Karadzhova-Beyer, and Andrea Fried highlight organizational deviance from standards in the software development of a service engineering company for rail vehicles called MetroEngineers. Despite the initial intention to develop software according to European standards, the case study explains the reasons why the software developers deviate from standards nonetheless. First, software development at MetroEngineers is provided for a Chinese market which is hardly regulated through standards. Deviations from standards are therefore hardly sanctioned, but even MetroEngineers itself has not established an adequate internal sanctioning system for standard deviations. Second, MetroEngineers’ software developers lack allocative and authoritative resources for standard enactment and a lively internal discourse on the importance of standard-compliant development involving middle management and the customer. This means that software developers are ambitiously trying to develop in accordance with European standards, but ultimately fail to overcome the various contradictions that arise in standard enactment. This chapter represents one of the two manipulation-oriented types of organizational deviance introduced in the book.

Introduction to Deviance in a World of Standards

In this chapter, Andrea Fried and Besma Glaa develop and reason the important and topical question why organizations deviate from standards. The chapter reflects on the current discourse on standards and standardization in management and organization studies, and positions Understanding Deviance in a World of Standards within it. The chapter distinguishes the terms standards and standardization, defines what standards are, and explains which categories exist to distinguish them. It points out why investigation of the actual enactment of standards in organizations is fundamental to understanding not only the manipulation of but also the commitment to standards. The chapter concludes by introducing the structure of Understanding Deviance in a World of Standards.

Understanding Deviance from Standards

In this chapter, Andrea Fried discusses the implications of a better understanding of deviance from standards for corporate responsibility in terms of both compliance-related duties for companies and their criminal liability. Five questions related to this are answered in this summarizing chapter: Is voluntary self-regulation of companies a way of ensuring corporate responsibility? What contributes to a manipulation of standards even if a strong external control and sanctioning system is in place? Should legislative authorities only sanction actual knowledge of and engagement in wrongful acts of standard deviation? Should legislation stipulate a criminal liability also for companies? Why should companies allow organizational members to deviate from standards? Answers to these questions relate to the empirical investigations presented in previous chapters of the book and show strong support for a corporate criminal law that should apply when standard deviations lead to health, environmental, or safety risks.

Investigating Organizational Deviance from Standards in Depth

In this chapter, Sarah Langer, Ronny Gey, and Diana Karadzhova-Beyer introduce how empirical investigations of organizational deviations from standards can be conceptualized. They suggest a focused ethnography approach to explore the organizational members’ view on the enactment of standards. The applied research strategy includes qualitative interviews, field observations, diaries, the analysis of documents, and questionnaires. The authors present the studies’ empirical premises and the sampling approach, as well as the process of data gathering and analysis. The chapter prepares methodological ground for the case studies CraneSolutions, MedTech, and MetroEngineers. In this way, the authors also provide guidelines and lessons learned, for instance, for replication studies on organizational deviance from standards in other industrial sectors, for other standards, and for the non-profit sector.

Attentive Deviance from Standards at CraneSolutions

In this chapter, Ronny Gey, Sarah Langer, and Andrea Fried draw attention to the actual enactment of standards in organizations. They describe a software developing project of the crane manufacturer CraneSolutions which is confronted with a situation where no standards are directly suitable for its niche products. The case of CraneSolutions is a striking example of mainly attentive deviance from standards. The chapter analyses how the organization succeeds in committing to standards while deviating from them attentively. Based on a structurationist framework, the analysis of CraneSolutions enables understanding of the enactment of standards as represented in the interpretative schemes, the facilities, and the social norms of the organization. Moreover, the authors explain organizational deviance from standards as a way of how organizations deal effectively with emerging asymmetries and contradictions during the enactment of standards. This chapter represents one of the two commitment-oriented types of organizational deviance introduced in the book.

Typology of Organizational Deviance from Standards

In this chapter, Andrea Fried and Sarah Langer present a novel typology to systematize the variety of and reasons for organizational deviance from standards. The typology explains why organizations deviate from standards. It identifies four types of organizational deviance: two types of commitment-oriented deviance (attentive deviance from standards and over-conformity with standards) and two types of manipulation-oriented deviance (non-regulated deviance from standards and illegitimate deviance from standards). The basis of the typology is a cross-case comparison of CraneSolutions, MedTech, and MetroEngineers, as presented in part II of the book. In this comparison the authors explain which organizational conditions and contradictions in standard enactment make a certain type of organizational deviance likely.

Structurationist Framework to Explore Organizational Deviance from Standards

In this chapter, based on structuration theory, Fried and Walgenbach develop a theoretical framework for exploring organizational deviance from standards empirically. They identify standards as modalities of action which trigger rules of interpretation, claim allocative and authoritative resources, and furthermore cause rules of sanctions in organizations. This overrides the view that failed standard enactment has something to do with either missing financial investments, or an inadequate ‘tone at the top’, or ineffective audits. It is rather, as the authors argue, its interplay that leads to an effective standard enactment or not. This interplay can yield different asymmetries and contradictions, which then lead to different types of organizational deviance.

A Second-Order Observation of Organizational Deviance

In this chapter, Andrea Fried and Arvind Singhal highlight which novel research questions break ground when taking a second-order perspective on organizational deviance. The concept of the ‘second-order observer’ for researchers leaves the assessment of organizational deviance explicitly to the empirical field, and brings organizations and their members as describers, as assessors, and as sanctioners of organizational deviance into the discussion. The chapter strengthens social agency in deviations from standards to counteract the view that deviants are a ‘passive non-entity’. Fried and Singhal describe how organizational deviance has three dimensions and can analytically be distinguished as a descriptive, a normative, and a sanctioning aspect. The chapter concludes with six assignments for developing a concept of organizational deviance.

Over-Conformity with Standards at MedTech

This chapter presents a case of a medical technology company where standards have already shaped software development processes for a long time. Ronny Gey, Sarah Langer, and Andrea Fried reflect here on how MedTech’s organizational members over-conform with standards. In contrast to CraneSolutions in the previous chapter, productive asymmetries and even contradictions were hardly found in standard enactment at MedTech. MedTech provides adequate allocative and authoritative resources for standardization, refers to strong internal and external sanctioning systems for standard deviations, but hardly reflects on the internal effects of standards on software development. The case described in this chapter delivers an explanation why over-commitment of organizational members to standards tends to reinforce organizational inertia and shows the importance of reflexive handling of standard-induced requirements within the organization. This chapter represents one of the two commitment-oriented types of organizational deviance introduced in the book.