Discussion section 14731 Discussion Assignment 2 Case Incident Creative Deviance: Bucking the Hierarchy 1. I think it is almost impossible for a company to deliberately create an anti-hierarchy atmosphere. Imagine a situation when on one hand, in order to keep the company runs steadily, employees are required to obey their superior; on the other hand, the company encourages employees to act on their own wills.
Such situation will confuse employees and results in the loss of company. There are employees that enjoy standardized jobs and like to be supervised so they can report any emergency immediately.Furthermore, hierarchy is highly related to chain of command and centralization which are two main element of organization structure. There are several things for company to do in order to encourage creative deviance. Firstly, give employees more freedom of decision by applying self-management and forming cross-functional team.
Secondly, set a relatively large span of control. The larger the spans of control, the more people superiors have to watch, the more freedom and autonomy for individuals.Thirdly, try to build the organization in organic model which has a loose structure, low specialization and thus more innovative. 2.
First of all, there is a chance that employees deliberately violate the decision of upper level to pursue personal interest. Generally speaking, most of the normal employees are not creative and clever enough to develop ideas better than those formed by superiors. What’s more, if employees use resources of company discretionarily without comply with the rules of company, the company will suffer from economic loss.At last, if employees often carry out deviant actions, upper managers will become less confident about their jobs and thus become less motivated.
3. From my point of view, the answer can be found from Steve Jobs himself. Firstly, Jobs is highly conscientiousness and low in agreeableness which means he is ambitious yet autocratic. Through a series of events, Jobs proved he had the ability to make the company better (expert power) and by saving the company from the edge of bankrupt he exerted referent power.
Secondly, Jobs is highly innovative and always make right decision.A strongly hierarchical structure ensures that Jobs’ decision can be carried out exactly. 4. I think the success of Apple can be attributed mostly to Jobs’ role as head of the hierarchy but this is based on the fact that Jobs is an innovative and judicious leader. When a company has a strong hierarchy it has the potential to suffer from unwise decisions made by upper level leaders.
It may also suffer from less innovative for there is little space of autonomy and work is highly specialize and standardized. The less of autonomy can also result in employees’ job dissatisfaction.
