The perils of success, or failure, where is thy sting? A comment on Whyte, Saks and Hook
✍ Scribed by Danny Miller
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 99 KB
- Volume
- 18
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0894-3796
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Whyte, Saks and Hook (1997) show vividly the potential complementarity of macro-and micro-approaches to organizational analysis. These authors and other scholars of self-ecacy have made signi®cant progress in explaining the sources of one of the most important macroorganizational problems: the perils of success (Miller, 1990(Miller, , 1994)). In this commentary I will examine some possible macro-organizational causes and eects of self ecacy, and delineate some issues and questions that may be worthy of further research.
The business press is ®lled with countless examples of once thriving organizations that foundered because they became too wed to existing practices and policies, or because they escalated those practices well past the point of utility. Rolls Royce's stellar record of innovation, for instance, made its executives so con®dent of their ability to meet technological challenges that they bet the company on a hopelessly futuristic jet engine (Mecklin, 1969). And IBM, hypnotized by its marketing triumphs, focused increasingly on selling, but forgot about product development (Loomis, 1987). Conglomerates such as Litton, LTV, Gulf and Western and ITT, too, engaged in prolonged bouts of escalation, as each successful acquisition led to a larger and riskier one (Miller, 1990). Of course much of this literature is largely anecdotal and we are left wondering about just why the managers of these once-successful companies behaved the way they did.
The Whyte, Saks and Hook (1997) paper provides some important clues. It suggests that successful managers, departments, and even companies develop greater con®dence in their abilities and in their winning policies or programs. As a result they stick with or amplify current practices in the belief that these are appropriate, and in the expectation that any emerging problems can easily be solved. In short, success breeds a sense of self-ecacy, which then causes a perpetuation or ampli®cation of the status quo. Although growing self-ecacy can undergird valuable persistence and necessary commitment, its darker side becomes apparent in reactions of hidebound inertia and unwarranted escalation.
The Whyte et al. (1997) study suggests several interesting avenues for future research. First, it would be useful to establish just what determines a manager's sense of self-ecacy. To what degree is it due to personal factors, and to what degree is it a function of conditions in the organization or environment? Among the former in¯uences, how important are a manager's career successes, his or her status in the organization, or positive feedback from immediate coworkers or personal projects? The broader organizational context also may play a role in managers' self-ecacy. This context may include factors such as company performance or the success of a particular product line. Indeed, Miller (1994) and Miller and Chen (1994, 1996) found that ®rms that had performed well were less apt to change their strategies and more apt to CCC 0894±3796/97/050433±03$17.50