In every organisation, there are individuals, ideas, and practices that don’t conform to the norm. These outliers—whether unconventional leaders, innovative teams, or unique workplace structures—challenge traditional ways of thinking. But how do organisations respond to atypicality?
Atypicality
Atypicality or a deviation from the norm or expected norm of a situation, context, behaviour can cause a range of issues in organisations. From a research perspective atypicality refers to characteristics, behaviours or outcomes that deviate from the norm or expected patterns within an organisation or group. It is often used to describe unusual or unconventional cases that do not fit standard models or frameworks.
A range of studies looking at atypicality
A range of studies looking at atypicality in organisations have been conducted over the years:
- Studies have examined organisations that deviate from the norm in their structure, practices or outcomes. For example, university research groups are described as atypical organisations that produce scientific knowledge, innovations and income in a non-business oriented, sub-organisational pseudo-business.
- In the field of leadership, studies have looked at atypical leaders such as the unorthodox public leadership approach of Jón Gnarr, who became Mayor of Reykjavík, Iceland in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. His authentic, yet atypical style, drawing on his background as a comedian, helped restore public trust during the crisis.
- Studies have looked at atypical work environments such as the organisational climate on board merchant marine vessels. Such working environments are atypical, involving confined spaces, isolation from family / social life and blurred boundaries between work and rest, for example. This unique environment shapes crew behaviours, wellbeing and safety.
A new study
A new review of the substantial body of work on atypicality in organisational and market settings has been conducted by researchers from IE University in Spain and the Bayes Business School, University of London in the UK.
Findings
The review found that:
1. Many organisations use a normative lens when examining, evaluating or analysing people, situations and things. This means that they view (through a set of unconscious lenses or filters) many forms of atypicality as a violation of the established norms. This includes:
a. How to categorise and understand things (cognitive lens).
b. What is acceptable behaviour, thinking and practice, including products and services (social / cultural normative lens).
c. What is considered to be irregular in established practices and ways of seeing things and being creative (an innovation lens).
2. There are three broad areas examined by the research of atypicality:
a. Sources of atypicality, such as
i. Behaviour
ii. Spontaneous expressions of identity
iii. Chance
b. Consequences of atypicality, such as
i. Problems (illegitimacy, confusion)
ii. Rewards (innovation, differentiation, transformation)
iii. Signalling effects (how atypicality signals underlying qualities, such as innovation potential, creativity, power, or status)
c. Boundary conditions that shape the responses to atypicality. For example:
i. The audience
ii. The context
iii. What’s producing the atypicality
iv. How much agency people feel they have
3. Atypicality tends to be accepted more in contexts characterised by greater ambiguity, dynamism and heterogeneity. Firms operating in such environments tend to experiment with unconventional practices more and value atypicality.
4. Atypicality can be a double-edged sword – atypicality tends to lead to problems like a sense of a lack of legitimacy and to confusion. However, under certain conditions it can also drive innovation, creativity and competitive differentiation.
5. The consequences of atypicality depend heavily on the audience – different stakeholders like consumers, investors and critics may respond differently to atypical offerings, based on their goals, expertise and preferences.
6. A range of organisational and individual characteristics, such as high status, slack resources and broad experience can help buffer against the negative consequences of atypicality.
7. Organisations can strategically use cultural elements like narratives, category labels and semantic associations to shape audience perceptions of their atypical offerings.
Primary reference
How worrying changes our intolerance of uncertainty
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