Who\u27s responsible? Values, mental models, choices and behavior related to responsibility in a corporate setting

Increasing responsibility among employees is the goal of many large-scale change efforts in corporations today. Traditional bureaucratic structures are being redesigned as empowered organizations. Usually redesigning the organization means redesigning employees. I became interested in the question of how individuals define responsibility and how these definitions are reflected in their behavior. This study blends data and theory within a framework suggested by three theories. Data were collected using observation and semi-structured interviews among employees in a finance department of a large manufacturing company. The data became a tool for testing the theories and the theories became a tool for making sense of the data; they support and inform each other. Testing, in this study, means looking at the interpretive utility of the theories. By first collecting the data and then choosing the theories, the extent to which the data corroborate the theories can be determined with a minimum of bias. I chose three theories to work with in conjunction with the data: The Empowered Manager by Peter Block (1987), The Shifting Sources of Power and Influence by Charles E. Dwyer (1991), and The Abilene Paradox and other Meditations on Management by Jerry B. Harvey (1988). All three theories emphasize psychological concepts as opposed to sociological, organizational, or group. The combination of the theories and data suggested a framework with four levels: values, a term borrowed from Dwyer (1991) to encompass wants, needs, values, predilections, and preferences; mental models, for example rationalization and negative fantasies; choices, such as autonomy or dependency, safety or risk; and behavior, particularly communicative behaviors. Each of these areas is explored in conjunction with the data and the theories. Support for all three theoretical models was found. It was also determined that asking employees to increase individual responsibility may be far more difficult than most theories lead us to believe. In the researcher\u27s opinion, each of the theories had limited potential in its application; limits imposed by the audience