THE REPRESSIOS OF ORGASIZATIOSAL INNOVATION LUCAS

The Repression of Organizational innovation Rob Lucas York Universiry

A bstracr 7his paper explores several related propos i i ik First,

socially constructed definirionr of innovation influence the domain of innovarive activity in organizations. Secondly, selective retention of past organizational history interacts with socially legitimate dejinitions of innovation. This interaction tends to repress certain modes of innovative effort, while sustaining and promoting others. Finally, repression can be considered an important componenr of any theory of organizational innovation on ~ H ' O grounds - ( I ) while much innovarive eflort is observed in organizations. repression mechanisms may obscure the economic and social value of that eflort, and (2) the memory of organizations more generally may be better understood by investigating the possible existence and variations of mechanisms of repression in organi- zations.

R&mi Cpt article explore plusieurs propositions interrelihes.

Tout d 'obord, &s &finitions de I 'innovation constntites sur des concepts s o c ~ u x influencent & domaine de I'octivith innovatrice &ns les organisations. Deuxi&mernent, & r6tention silectiw de I'hisroire de 1 'organisation inreragit avec les difinitions de Ihovotion bashes sur la lhgitimith socwle. Cette interaction rend a riprimer certaines formes de Ikflort d'innovation tout en soutenant er en stimulant d'ourres formes de lkflort d'innovation tout en soutenant et en stimulont d'outres formes d 'innovation. Finalement, la rkpression peui itre considhrhe comme une composanre importante de route ahiorie organisationnelle de I 'innovation pour deux raisons - 1) alors qu'on observe un grand eflort d 'innovation dans les organisations, 14s mhcanismes de rdpression ont rendance a occulter la valeur iconomique et sociale de cet eflort - 2) la mhmoire des organisations peui itre ghnhralemeni mieux comprise a rravers lo recherche de lkxistence possible de mhcanismes de repression dans les organisations.

INTRODUCTION

When a decision is required on a particular organ- izational issue, the classification of that issue is crucial in specifying who is expected to decide. The act of classifying the decision issue also places the issue in a variety of other contexts, for example. whether the issue is high-priority or low-priority, is a marketing or a finance issue, or whether the issue may be regarded as "innovation" or business-as-usual. Innovation in organizations is usually regarded as a necessity, not a luxury. Consequently, defining a given issue as innovative can significantly affect the likelihood and magnitude of economic support that goes along with being included in the general class of innovat ion. Those issues (and their associated decision makers) that are classified as "innovation" can expect that their requirements will also be defined as "necessary" when organizational resources are allocated. On the other hand, resource shortages are a distinct possibility for those unfortunate enough 10 be excluded from the class of innovators. I suggest that the social definition of innovation goes beyond what we conventionally understand as labelling effects. Two essential aspects of political process are also involved - the exclusion of alternative definitions-of-the-situation which dn not f i t

pre-existing organizational languages, and the author- ization of particular definitions which are created by the classification process itself. Diesing (1962,~. 198) describes the process:

"Political rationality is the fundamental kind of reason, because it deals with the preservation and improvement of (classification] structures, and [classification] structures are the source of all decisions. Unless a [classification] structure exists, no reasoning and no decisions are possible."

If we take Diesing's statement seriously, organizational innovation is also directly (if disguisedly) related to the question of repression in organizations. innovation becomes a function of repression precisely because the classification systems within which organizational decisions are made exclude some decisions and decision- makers from resourcc-rich environments while including others. Therefore, if a particular classification system is used in deciding a particular issue, one explicit result can be the exclusion of that issue from the class of "innovation', and vice versa. Undoubtedly, individual organizations (eg., Air Canada vs. Royal Bank, or DON Chemical vs. Becker's Store No. 176) will exhibit

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differences in how they actually designate the status of decision issues as "innovative" or "non-innovative". At this time I am not aware of any research that has examined these types of differences in terms of organizational languages and authority structures.

But, a good deal of research (eg.. Damanpour and Evan, 1984; Riley, 1983) indicates that classification systems themselves are rarely examined by decision- makers for the very good reason that such examination ruks destabilizing the basic means of allocating organizational problems and resources. Thus it is possible that the underlying framework within which organkations deal with innovation may quite literally k an unconscious one. Unexamined (ie., unconscious) rrpects of organizational memory may be very active in designating domains of innovative activity that may be legitimately considered by conscious decision-makers, while denying legitimacy to other domains. The rmainder of this paper will take up various aspects of this question, and will apply the results of the discussion lo the domains defined by Abernathy and Utterback

-11978) as "product" and "process" innovation.

DRGANIZATIONAL AUTHORITY AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF INNOVATION

How can organizational classification systems define $legitimacy of various modes of innovative behaviour? kt us begin by considering the relation between iuthority and structure. Weber ( 1947) defined authority in terms of belief and legitimacy. Organizational luthority is based upon a belief in the legitimacy of he organization's structure of positions, rules, and procedures. Specialized, technical languages are Wicular embodiments of organizational procedures ind operating rules, and there is considerable evidence ndicating that organizational decision making occurs vithin such specialized languages (eg.. Allison, I97 I ; Bracken, 1984; Evered, 1983). March and Simon (1958) lsggest that organizational authority structures are rpresented in specialized languages. They describe the rlation between organizational language and decision risking in the following way:

I

'...the world tends to be perceived by the organization members in terms of the particular concepts that are reflected in the terms of the organization's vocabulary. The particular categories and schemes of classification [the vocabulary] employs are reified, and become, lor members of the organization, attributes of the world rather than mere conventions."(p. 165)

k authority to make particular decisions is usually Ircseribed by a hierarchy made up of specific positions 'roles. More specifically, each position in a hierarchy hhority is given the right to dispose of certain clusses qanizational decisions. Organizational languages

are the medium in which decision makers carry out their roles, specifying who has the authority to make particular

. decisions, for example, innovation decisions. Organizational languages create frames of reference for organizational decisions, whether "innovative" or not, and those frames define any decision in terms of the concepts that make up the language itself (Lcvi-Strauss, 1963). Hence a hierarchy of authority acts as a classification system, with each class or category of responsibility representing a specialized language of decision.

Classification implies the use of a language in which problems and their solutions can be clearly articulated (Bateson, 1972). and acts as a process of exclusion. This exclusion process results in a list of legitimate options prescribed for implementation (Wingert, 1979). The options themselves issue from a well-known and legitimate framework, a set of mental rules that decision- makers use to interpret particular situations. Such frameworks form the basic structure of organizational memory, and are used by decision-makers to interpret any given situation (Blau and McKinley, 1979; Lucas, 1987). But memory provides the decision-maker with more than just data concerning a particular situation. Organizational memory also provides for many possible definitions of what the "true" (ie., legitimate) problem is.

Memory and the Selective Retention of Organizational History

Allocating a "true", or legitimate, definition to an organizational problem is a function of its assignment to a pretxisting language or action category which is amenable to examination, analysis, and decision. Bonge (1972) and Wingert (1979) refer to this function as diagnosis, the essence of which is a clustering of symptoms into named entities. Such names define diseases in the process of medical diagnosis. Similarly, organizational diagnosis classifies the characteristics of problems into clusters that have recognizable names, eg., "innovation". These names serve as frames which create the possibility of analysis. Mintzberg et. al. (1976) pointed out that investigation of the diagnostic aspect of organizational decision making had not received the attention it merits. More recent reviews of organizational decision-making research by Grandori (1984) and Nutt (1984) retmphasize this point.

But, the initial diagnosis of organizational problems is often crucial in determining how organizational memory is selectively accessed and attached to current organizational problems (Lucas, 1987). The perception that decisions requiring innovation are "strategic" or "crisis" decisions has some significant effects. The problems that occasion these kinds of decisions are commonly s e n by managers as non-routine or ill- structured (Lyles and Mitroff, 1980). Such a perception generates a feeling of anxiety and/or excitement surrounding innovation. However, social psychologists have often noticed that when people find themselves

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under pressure, they tend to revert to solutions that are well-known and well-understood (Weick, 1979). In other words, ill-structured problems often generate routine solutions that can be dealt with in a predictable way, which redum anxiety. There may be a lot of these solutions available in organizational memory, and, to put it bluntly, they're boring. On the other hand, routine solutions sustain any organization because of their speed and predictability. Routine solutions can also represent process innovations, because they reflect incremental change within existing, well-understood parameters (Barley, 1986; Lucas, 1986). Therefore, the selective retention of, and occcss to, organizational memory becomes intimately linked to variations of innovative behaviour in organizations.

CLASSIFICATION AND REPRESSION

Available options for change or innovation exist in organizational memory, as classes or categories of responses that have been used previously. The specific memories of organizations can be found in formal documents (eg., strategies, budgets, files, job descrip- tions, etc.), the oral tradition of the organization (eg., norms, culture), or within the minds of organizational members. Consequently, organizational memory is a record of routines, those patterns of action and belief that have been developed in response to past goals or changes in the organization's environments (Weick, 1979; Neisser, 1976). As can be seen, the range of Organizational memories is extraordinarily wide. But the information contained in them is retained in quite different forms, which often creates.great difficulty for decision-makers as they try to create innovative solutions for organizational problems.

If memory is a record of past experience, it is also capable of acting as a guide to the future. But the memory of organizations, as with individual people, is not perfect. Some memories are easily recalled, while many (perhaps most) remain inaccessible. Why some memories remain inaccessible, while others can be easily retrieved and implemented, is an extremely complex question, but Weick (1979) suggests that there are similarities between individual and organizational memory retrieval pro- cesses. Repression of memory is one aspect of those processes that has undergone extensive study with respect to individuals (eg., Freud, 1975).

Less attention has been paid to whether and how the repression of organizational memory might occur. However, there is an interesting similarity between repression mechanisms operating within individuals and the diagnosis of problems occurring in organizations. Bateson (1972) and Freud (1975) provide evidence that repression in individuals is a function of the classification of memory. 1 have endeavoured to show that the diagnosis of organizational problems is also a function of classification processes. Consequently, it seems

worthwhile to pursue the possibility that, in organha- tions, classification is analogous to repression.

Sources of Repression I suggest that repression of organizational memory

springs from the same source as the repression of individual memories. With individuals, particular memories are repressed from consciousness as a result of a fear of the possible contradictions between previous experience and present behaviour, or guilt regarding the propriety of past behaviour that might be remembered (Freud, 1975).

What could organizations have to be guilty about? One example is provided by rcsearch on organizational decision making (eg., Crozier, 1964; Aiken et. al., 1980). Their research reported that, while the strategies developed by senior managers change quite frequently, less senior groups and the relations between them change much less frequently. A major consequence of this difference has been that high-profile decisions (eg., corporate strategy) a n difficult to actually implement by lowertchelon groups. Those groups often find that no sooner have they invested time and resources implementing one strategy than they receive orders to stop and take up the implementation of a new and radically different plan.

Crozier emphasizes that lowertchelon groups tend to conveniently "forget" many such high-profile changes, for very good reasons. Forgetting allows the affected work-groups to protect themselves against change that could damage their efficiency, and hence their claim to recognition and resources. Forgetting, or repression, of organizational memories protects the stability of the organization itself by buffering the relations between various groups. Barley's (1986) analysis shows a similar pattern. He found that the introduction of identical new technologies in different organizations produced different structural adaptations. In both of the cases he describes, those adaptations involved the active forgetting (ie., repression) of structural conditions that existed prior to the amval of the new technology. The forgetting of legitimate structures, either by the senior managers in charge, or by the subordinates who are supposed t o work within them, poses a serious contradiction for both groups.

The active forgetting of such contradictions is one of two possible types of repression (Freud, 1975). Active forgetting is done by conscious actors, and the behaviour that has been forgotten is replaced by an illusion that is useful to all involved. That illusion, by replacing the memory of actual behaviour with a socially acceptable version of events, creates a certain stability of social relations while resolving the contradiction that legitimate means for ordering organizational changes are often, in truth, illegitimately ignored.

There is a second type of repression to be considered, which involves the prevention of memories that already exist from emerging into consciousness. As distinct from active forgetting, which operates only to place the

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memory of current behaviour into storage, the second lype of repression acts to prevent the rezmergence of memories that have already been placed in storage [Freud, 1975). This second type will be referred to simply 1s repression, in contrast to active forgetting. Two :holan, Pfeffer (1977) and Thompson (1967), have kussed an analogous concept which they refer to as ihe setting of the premises of decision". Repression h ides with the setting of organizational decision remises in an interesting way. Both concepts describe H means by which the entire range of decision options is1 should be available to individuals as they make ccisions are prevented from reaching conscious sreness. Pfeffer defines the agent of such prevention I a conscious actor who is attempting to control the ceision-making process of other individuals. If these [tempts are successful, Pfeffer suggests that control by ne actor over the decision making process of another clor is total, due to the fact that the controllee would L consciously using the same decision premises as the ontroller would in similar situations. In the repression of organizational memory, the agent

I an unconscious actor. That actor is the usually Inexamined (and therefore, unconscious) classification ncchanism that is used to define organizational pblems. There has been some recent resarch into wganizational innovation that illustrates how this Bond type of repression. process may operate in ~rgsnitations. Tolbert and Zucker's (1983) discussion 1 the diffusion of administrative innovations indicates h n "...the adoption of [an innovation] by an ~ganization is importantly determined by the extent lowhich the measure is institutionalized ..."(p. 22). More pcifically, their analysis implies that new, imported, iventions are easier to legitimize and implement than vc purely local incremental changes to existing khnologies. This finding is in accord with Damanpour md Evan's (1984) analysis, which indicated a substantial hg between the adoption of "social" and "technical" innovations. it seems possible that "technical" innova- lions enjoy an implementation advantage over "social" innovations. This advantage may derive from the fact !hat it is easier for organizational decision-makers to lorget the past and "begin with a clean sheet of paper" when adopting innovations. They therefore prefer to cnjoy the possibility of ignoring the history of past events by sdopting "technical" innovations that are unencum- bend by that history. "Social" innovations do not enjoy uch an opportunity, built as they are upon an already xisting framework of events and structure.

lEPRESSl0 N AND INN OVATI 0 N

Let us briefly summarize the discussion so far. hsification systems (ie., organizational languages) act

of gate which. among other things, legitimizes between problems, existing solutions (ie.,

mories). and decision makers. Classification acts to

repress certain memories, while legitimizing others. But the repression of organizational memory is selective, not universal. The actual selection, retrieval, and repression of particular organizational memories is put into operation when problems are intitially diagnosed. If the analogy between individual and organizational repres- sion holds, access and retrieval of specific organizational memoria will depend on the relations between those memories, how they are classified when in storage, and the "relevance" of particular memories to current situations. "Relevance", in turn, may well be a function of how organizational languages regulate the attachment of specific memories to current problems. Language represses certain memories by preventing their iegiti- mate attachment to existing problems, while permitting the attachment of newly created solutions to those same problems. If we reflect for a moment, it seems likely that a language that defines certain solutions as "boring", "predictable", or "incremental" may well exclude those same solutions (and their associated decision makers) from being considered as "innovative", 'exciting", or "strategic" for the future success of the organization.

How might this discussion relate to innovative effort actually occurring in Canadian organizations? In a paper I wrote three years ago (Lucas, 1986). 1 suggested that the distinction between process innovation and product innovation allowed for a clearer understanding of the outcomes of innovative effort. That distinction was based on Abernathy and Utterback's (1978) work, which defined the difference in the following way. Process innovation is based on incremental change within well- understood parameters, while product innovation reflects efforts to invent radically new products. Product innovation is usually measured by statistics on "Research and Development", while process innovation has no conventionally accepted counterpart. But, Abernathy and Utterback remind us that innovation is not limited to the invention of bright new technologies, and can also reflect a collective effort to improve upon the existing order of things. Marcus (1981) describes the many faces of organizational innovation:

"Innovation is a slippery concept. For instance, it has been defined by economists as the application of an invention, or the adoption of a new tool or concept; but patent attorneys consider it to be the discovery of a tool or concept and not its eventual application. Innovation [can also] be viewed as the replace- ment of similar but less efficient inputs in the production process or outputs in the product mix. lnnovation can beeither a hardware change (a change in product, plant, or equipment), or a software change (a change in ideas, processes, or systems)."

M y (1986) analysis was based on SIC 3digit level industry data. and its main conclusion was that innovative effort in Canadian industry was being

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seriously underestimated, simply because there was (and still is) no accepted means of measuring innovation other than that usually referred t o as "Research and Development". Yet when 1 used an admittedly crude measure of process innovation, the results were startling. Rather than appearing (using R+D data) to be among the poorest innovators in the industrialized world, several Canadian industries were found to be excellent process innovators.

A Research Agenda If organizational classification systems define product

innovation as the only legitimate type of innovation, while repressing process innovation, then individual organizations may be ignoring a fertile source of innovative effort. 1 do not possess the appropriate data to describe whether and how repression may, in fact, be occurring at the level of individual Organizations, and what the effects might be on the competitive strategies of those organizations. But, the conventional classification of innovation that now exists at the industry level of analysis may be reproduced in the specialized languages of classification existing within individual organizations.

The following propositions outline an agenda intended to guide research into the relation between forgetting, repression, and innovation:

(1) Individual organizations will exhibit differ- ences in how they actually designate the status of decision issues as "innovative" or "non- innovative". A hierarchy of authority acts as a classification system, with each class or category of responsibility representing a specialized language of decision. Research is required to examine these types ef differences in terms of organizational languages and authority structures.

(2) Different modes of innovative behaviour are a function of the capacity of organizational languages to classify particular decisions, and decision makers, as innovative. Research is required to explore how innovation is actually defined in organizations, as opposed to defi- nitions used primarily by academic researchers.

(3) Active forgetting is one of two possible types of repression. Active forgetting replaces the memory of actual behaviour with socially acceptable versions of organizational events. Research is required that investigates the means by which this type of repression creates stability of social relations.

(4) A second type of repression acts to prevent the reemergence of memories that ha\*e ahead) been placed in storage. Research is required that examines the effects of t he re- emergence of stored memory on current organizational structure and process.

CONCLUSION

In an era that has virtually canonized technological change, any limits to such change have rarely been acknowledged. But, in hearings before the U.S. Congress in 1986, general James McCall, the chief budget officer of the United States Army stated:

"The bottom line is that we can't afford the luxury of producing the old while developing the new."

We do not usually think of innovation as a luxury. Quite the opposite. Innovation is perceived as a necessity for organizational, and even national, survival. But it is clear the general feels that the economic resources available for innovation are far from infinite. This is not an issue that is somehow limited to the military. In western economies, the military is not supplied from its own arsenals, but by a vast array of commercial organizations that represent the full variety of resources available in a national economy. Thus general McCall's statement may well be indicative of concerns throughout the economy more broadly. While there surely are economic limits on organizational innovation, construing innova- tion in economic terms alone may be misleading.

The apparently irrational behaviour we have described as repression is not something that fits easily into more conventional, rational discussions of how innovations are actually implemented in organizations. But Rothwell (1977) points out that senior management needs to know what the outcomes of all types of innovative effort in their organizations are. He also observed that those same managers were often unable to perceive that process innovation is, in fact, innovation. This despite the fact that "...it is extremely important from the point of vieu of resource allocation to know what type, and what level, of resources to devote to the different kinds of innovation" (Rothwell, 1977; p.204). In this vein, Anthony and Utterback (1978) and Mansfield (1984) have noted that a reliance on standard measures of innovative effort can miss the point of why firms and industries engage in technological change. Mansfield (1984) stresses that:

"...discussions of technology policy in many countries are prone to overemphasize research and development. For many purposes, the important thing is innovation or technological change, not R+D. By itself, R+D is of little or no value. Only when it is combined with ..... production capabilities does it become impor- tant."

I t is only sensible to conclude that any product innovation will be of limited use if a company lacks the necessary production or marketing capabilities 10 be able to utilize it. Similarly, process innovations are less viable in industries that do not manufacture

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rynization with too good a memory might narrow ichoiccs to such an extent as to stifle innovation. That scription may be accurate regarding product innova- Jn, but not with respect to process innovation. Freud 961) provides us with a different view of the relation Zwnn innovation and organizational structure:

"The person who appeals to authority when faced with a conflict is using his memory rather than his reason."

LUCAS

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