Active Avoidance in Organizations

Don’t talk about it: Active avoidance in organizations

Julia Bear
Anita Williams Woolley
Carnegie Mellon University

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 Active Avoidance in Organizations

Abstract

We introduce a new construct—active avoidance—that can be beneficial for organizations. Active

avoidance is motivated by situational incongruence and takes two qualitatively different forms—

pretending and bypassing, depending on the salience of outcome versus process expectations in an

aversive situation. Active avoidance can lead to positive consequences by facilitating process

inventions that involve increased efficiency and helpful accommodations. We discuss the

conditions under which organizations can harness the positive results of active avoidance.

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Many of us face tasks on a daily basis that we do not want to do -- take out the garbage,

talk with an unpleasant co-worker, or finish a difficult or tedious task. When faced with an aversive

situation, we have several options: we can ignore our distaste for the task and do it anyway, change

the situation to make it less unpleasant somehow, or avoid it. Research has cast situations in which

people choose to persevere (Hamel & Valikangas, 2003; Luthans, 2002) and/or make

organizational change (Bennis, 1963; Kanter, 1983) as particularly heroic. By contrast, avoidance

of negative experiences has been largely viewed as a passive response with negative implications,

especially in organizational research (Ashforth & Lee, 1990; Harris & Sutton, 1983; Keltner,

Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003; Pruitt & Carnevale, 1993). We offer a different perspective, arguing

that avoidance can be a useful strategy with positive effects under certain conditions. Toward this

end, we introduce the idea of "active avoidance," in which individuals implicitly search for and

covertly pursue alternative strategies in order to reduce their experience of aversion. Active

avoidance can have informational value for organizations and can lead to the discovery of novel

methods for handling situations that individuals would otherwise find aversive, possibly in a more

effective manner than simply encouraging individuals to give voice to concerns, and particularly

when the extent of a problem and its potential solutions are not well understood.

By introducing the construct of active avoidance, we intend to advance organizational

literature in the following ways. First, active avoidance is a common but unrecognized method that

employees use to cope with aversive situations that arise in organizations as a result of

incongruence between situational demands and employees’ preferences, perceived roles, or

expected work processes. Second, avoidance has typically been understood to have negative

consequences, but we argue that, when employee and organizational goals are aligned, active

avoidance can lead to positive consequences for organizations involving process inventions that

increase efficiency and create helpful accommodations for employees to deal with situational

incongruence. Third, active avoidance can lead to useful organizational inventions by building a

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larger pool of alternative solutions from which to choose, made up of the local adaptations that

employees have made to deal with their own personal situation.

We first review literature relevant to active avoidance, and discuss how active avoidance differs

from more traditional views of avoidance, as well as from more overt, change-oriented approaches

to dealing with aversive situations. We then discuss the antecedents of active avoidance,

particularly the role that process versus outcome constraints in organizations play in influencing the

shape of active avoidance strategies. Next, we discuss two categories of active avoidance strategies,

namely pretending and bypassing. Finally, we discuss the consequences of active avoidance,

focusing particularly on the conditions under which active avoidance will lead to process inventions

that enhance efficiency and accommodation of differences. We conclude by making suggestions for

future research based on this construct.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

People face aversive situations in organizations all the time. Aversion, which refers to the

experience of repugnance or intense dislike that creates the impulse to move away (Merriam-

Webster, 1991) is a common experience, since the constraints and expectations inherent in the

requirements to conform to an organizational role and to coordinate with others restrict the freedom

of organizational actors in ways that can create a sense of loss of control and interpersonal friction

(Katz & Kahn, 1978). For example, expectations related to work processes often lead employees to

feel like they are being watched (Markus, 1978), whereas expectations related to outcomes can

create performance pressures (Jensen & Meckling, 1976; Locke, Latham, & Smith, 1990), which

some may find aversive. One less recognized source of aversion individuals experience in

organizations is situational incongruence, or the lack of fit between an individual’s preferences,

perceived role, or expectations about work processes and outcomes. Situational incongruence can

arise from the presence of organizational constraints that individuals cannot easily reconcile. For

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example, in the case of a preference incongruence, an employee may prefer to work a later schedule

(e.g. to come in later in the morning and stay later) but be required to work with others who start

the day and schedule meetings earlier. Role incongruence is experienced when responsibilities or

situational demands are at odds with an individual’s organizational or societal role, such as when

the traditional gender roles of the actors are incongruent with the demands of the situation {Bear,

2010 #1945; Eagly, 2002 #1946}. Incongruence between work processes and outcomes occurs

when the prescribed set of practices is at odds with desired outcomes; for example, police who are

attempting to apprehend a criminal quickly are frequently required to follow a set of rules and

procedures that slow the process down. When these sources of situational incongruence are large,

we argue that the traditional conceptions of avoidance as withdrawal take hold, as actors see no

means of reconciling the incongruence. However, when the gap is perceived as moderate but

manageable, we argue that individuals will employ a range of active avoidance strategies to

accommodate the incongruence between the demands of the situation and their individual

preferences and expectations.

Despite what we maintain is the preponderance of active avoidance in response to these

types of aversive situations in organizations, the dominant focus of organizational literature has

been on proactive responses, such as overtly promoting organizational change. This is in the face

of mounting evidence from research in social cognition and clinical psychology that calls into

question the value of focusing on and discussing problems in every situation. Proponents of positive

psychology and solution-focused brief therapy have convincingly argued that focusing on negative

states of mind is not the same as creating positive states (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) and

that discussing solutions does not depend directly on fully explicating problems (de Shazer, Berg,

Lipchik, & Nunnally, 1986; Trepper, Dolan, McCollum, & Nelson, 2006). In addition, research on

the efficacy of coping methods has shown that problem-focused coping can lead to frustration,

especially when a stressor is intractable (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Even the act of asking

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individuals to think about problems may increase their salience and lead people to overlook

solutions (Gingerich & Eisengart, 2000). Furthermore, there are costs to individuals who raise

problems and "complain" in organizations. Despite extensive attempts by organizations to create a

climate in which members are invited to raise issues, evidence suggests that they do so at

significant cost to interpersonal relationships and careers (Near & Miceli, 1986).

In addition to the drawbacks of inculcating a problem focus in individuals, organizations

are also not particularly adept at dealing with the type of information that tends to surface when

problems are discussed. Collectives are particularly weak in diagnosing and distinguishing

big/system-wide/long-lasting problems from small/local/short-term problems (Forrester, 1994;

Senge & Sterman, 1992) and projecting the potential value of novel solutions in the absence of

demonstrable evidence (Jackson, Golub, & Building; Surowiecki & Silverman, 2007). Thus even

when problems are surfaced, the likelihood that accurate diagnosis and useful change will follow as

a result of having collectives talk about them is small (Surowiecki & Silverman, 2007). By contrast,

collectives can deal very effectively with observable evidence—sensing that a new approach or

direction is better than the current one and following suit, until what starts as a subtle tendency

becomes a swarm (J. Kennedy, Eberhart, & Shi, 2001).

Therefore, we counter the notion that individuals can and should always raise problems for

collective consideration by offering a different perspective, one that highlights the potential value in

implicitly seeking out more subtle and local solutions in problematic situations, which can yield

important benefits to organizations under certain conditions. Toward this end, we introduce the

concept of active avoidance, which is the implicit search for and use of alternatives motivated to

reduce the negative experience of aversion. In other words, active avoiders are addressing an

aversive situation by doing something other than what is expected or prescribed, and they are doing

it without discussing it with others. Active avoidance can be positive because it enables individuals

to make short-term adaptations in the face of situational incongruence, but to do so in such a way

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that they can forego the negative interpersonal discomfort and relational consequences of raising

problems. Additionally, given the challenges associated with collective problem diagnosis and

projection of novel solutions, active avoidance can be beneficial to organizations by allowing

individuals to make short-term adaptations to locally aversive situations, which provides some level

of relief to them in the short term, and over time can provide system-wide diagnostic information

(if many individuals are avoiding the same sorts of things) as well as demonstrable evidence of

potential solutions (if individuals have innovated and tested new ways to handle a situation).

Active Avoidance versus Traditional Conceptions of Avoidance

Traditional conceptions of avoidance involve withdrawal or inaction. At its most basic,

avoidance is an innate response to a threat or an aversive situation (Cannon, 1932; Thorndike,

1898). On a psychological level, pursuing pleasure versus avoiding pain--the hedonic principle--is a

basic tenet of psychology (Freud & Hubback, 1922). In organizational research, avoidance has also

been viewed largely as withdrawal and examined with respect to turnover and exit in response to

job dissatisfaction. Empirical evidence has shown that job dissatisfaction is a significant predictor

of withdrawal from organizations (Mobley, 1977; Tett & Meyer, 1993). When complete withdrawal

is not an option in organizations, neglect, meaning the passive disregard of performing expected

behaviors, may occur. Examples of neglect include calling in sick, coming in late and allowing

errors to occur due to negligence (Farrell, 1983; Rusbult, Farrell, Rogers, & Mainous Iii, 1988). In

addition to withdrawal and neglect, researchers in OB have identified indefinite delay as another

way that actors remove themselves from undesirable situations in organizations (Izraeli & Jick,

1986). Similarly, Harris and Sutton (1983) identified "task procrastination" as a common form of

non-action in organizations, primarily due to the aversive nature of certain tasks, namely

unappealing, difficult, ambiguous and unimportant tasks.

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The view of avoidance as inaction has been called in to question by more recent research in

psychobiology and basic psychology. Past research on the physiology of avoidance has centered on

seminal work by Gray (1970) on the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the Behavioral

Activation System (BAS). While avoidance was initially associated with BIS and thus equated with

behavioral inhibition and inaction, more recent work has focused on the more active approaches of

behavior motivated to forego aversive experiences. The BIS is still understood to be the

neuropsychological epicenter of anxiety. However, while previously serving to regulate responses

to conditioned aversive stimuli, it is now understood to be activated by sources of conflict among

any inputs that might activate both the BAS and the "Fight, Flight, or Freeze System" (FFFS). As

such, the BIS is no longer considered solely a punishment system, but rather a conflict detection

and resolution device. Thus, BIS-engagement elicits search behavior designed to resolve these

conflicts (McNaughton & Corr, 2004). In the psychology literature, the approach versus avoid

dichotomy has also been found to be more complex than was originally conceived. Dollard and

Miller (1950) first theorized about the ways in which goals often contain both desirable and

undesirable components, resulting in approach-avoid conflicts. Higgins and colleagues (E. Higgins,

1987, 1989; E. Higgins, Roney, Crowe, & Hymes, 1994) subsequently showed that the classic,

hedonic principle is an oversimplification of motivation and self-regulation, and that, within the

broader goal of pursuing desired results, people implement promotion-focused or prevention-

focused strategies depending upon the particular goal. Rather than conflate approach with pleasure

and avoidance with pain, regulatory focus takes a broader view of the ways in which people self-

regulate in order to obtain both achievement and security goals (see Higgins (1997) for a review).

Thus, the existing literature provides some indication that avoidance is not only passive as

previously conceived and that a one-sided view of avoidance as withdrawal or passive, negative

behavior is too narrow.

To supplement the literature on avoidance in organizations, which tends to focus on what

the actor is *not* doing, i.e. avoiding engaging in an aversive task or withdrawing from an

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organization, active avoidance reflects the active pursuit of less aversive alternatives in an implicit

manner, which has not been captured in previous, related research. Active avoidance occurs when

individuals judge that the aversive situation they face is not insurmountable, and that changing the

situation will yield benefits over not changing the situation, but that doing so explicitly will be

personally costly or unsuccessful. Trying to make an explicit change to the organization can be

costly in the interpersonal domain, where interpersonal judgments and sensitivities around

impression management run high. Lack of success may be anticipated most in the task domain,

where individuals judge that alternative methods might be viewed as invalid by others, or where

they do not yet have the evidence to convince others that a new approach would work just as well

or better than current approaches. In this way, active avoidance allows individuals to make changes

without provoking interpersonal confrontation, or to test out new approaches and gather evidence of

their success before exposing them to the collective opinion of others in the organization.

Furthermore, active avoidance is most likely to be used when the situational incongruence being

experienced is moderate, but not too great – when preferences, roles, or processes are at odds with a

desired or expected outcome – but the actor sees a way to reconcile the conflicting demands of the

situation.

Proposition 1: Moderate levels of situational incongruence will result in a greater likelihood

of active avoidance behavior.

In the next section of the paper, we outline the situational constraints that influence the

manifestation of active avoidance. In particular, we examine the role of constraints and expectations

in organizations and the ways in which they interact with actors' experience of aversion to influence

the shape of active avoidance behavior. We then delineate the ways in which process versus

outcome expectations interact with aversion to shape the active avoidance strategies actors adopt --

namely, pretending and bypassing.

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MODERATORS OF ACTIVE AVOIDANCE: CONSTRAINTS AND EXPECTATIONS

(OR "RULES ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN")

Some argue that the main function of organizational designers is to constrain behavior and

focus attention so that workers might be more "boundedly rational" (March, Simon, & Guetzkow,

1958; Ocasio, 1997). Constraints direct attention and shape behavior, and we argue that the form

active avoidance will take will be influenced by the kinds of constraints that exist in the aversive

context that the actors are attempting to implicitly change. Constraints can take the form of specific

goals or end states of activity, or may specify the boundaries outside of which behavior is not

permitted. Constraints in organizations can be communicated in a variety of ways. They can be

formal, as official rules or policies, or informal, as social norms. They can be communicated

somewhat negatively in terms of rules against prohibited behavior or more positively in the form of

expectations. They can also be more general, i.e. in order to maintain a job an employee needs to

show up for work, to a much more fine-grained level, i.e. in order to maintain one's position as a

waitress it is necessary to always smile, be friendly, and introduce oneself by name. Even more

informal and tacit are the normative social expectations around working hours, clothing, eating with

co-workers at lunch, or attending company social functions. Implicitly, organizational actors can

become focused on their own performance outcomes through competition and interpersonal

comparisons with peers or relevant others (Menon, Thompson, & Choi, 2006). Likewise, implicit

expectations about the processes characterizing work behavior (work hours, interpersonal conduct,

habits and routines) can be communicated through norms and subtle environmental cues (Barker,

1993; Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1985; Feldman, 1984) without any explicit process mandates or

enforcement. Thus, constraints shape the formal or informal expectations about the ways in which

people are expected to behave, express themselves and perform their jobs in many different

situations in organizations.

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Constraints in organizational settings can also be characterized as residing within the

outcome or process domains of organizational work. The process domain refers to the way in which

work gets done whereas the outcome domain refers to the final product or intended end results of

work (Woolley, 2009a, 2009b). The role of outcome and process constraints in focusing individuals

on lower-level activities versus overarching goals is consistent with work on construal and action

identification (Trope & Liberman, 2003; R. R. Vallacher & Wegner, 1985, 1987). Individuals can

identify actions as low-level, specific activities (e.g. ―I am typing a report‖) or in higher-level terms

that encompass multiple specific alternative activities for enactment (e.g. ―I am consolidating and

communicating my knowledge‖). Low-level action identifications are associated with identifying

what tasks need to be accomplished and what processes to follow, whereas high-level action

identifications are associated with identifying larger goals and outcomes of the work itself.

Furthermore, the level at which people identify their actions is highly influenced by cues provided

by the task context (R. Vallacher, Wegner, & Somoza, 1989). In this way, action identification

unfolds as an emergent process in both individuals and teams, as members reconceptualize what

they are doing based on their experience and information in the environment (R. R. Vallacher &

Wegner, 1985).

Managerial actions regularly focus attention on the outcome versus process spheres of

activity in organizations, and the distinction between how processes and outcomes operate in

reasoning and collective functioning has been examined in prior research on the individual, group

and organizational levels (e.g. (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Trotschel, 2001; Benner

& Tushman, 2003; Locke & Latham, 1990; Woolley, 2009a, 2009b). For example, the outcome-

process distinction has been applied to research on accountability, an issue which is critical in many

organizational settings. Accountability can have a variety of effects that are in part explained by the

distinction between process accountability and outcome accountability (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999).

Both can have positive and negative effects. Though outcome accountability can motivate effort

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toward a highly desirable goal, it can have dysfunctional consequences such as escalation of

commitment to a prior course of action (Simonson & Staw, 1992) or the encouragement of

unethical behavior (Siegel-Jacobs & Yates, 1996). Process accountability can mitigate the incidence

of both escalation of commitment (Simonson & Staw, 1992) and process dysfunctions observed in

the context of exclusive outcome accountability, as well as improve accuracy and confidence

calibration in decision-making (Siegel-Jacobs & Yates, 1996). However, process accountability and

the constraints it entails may also harm creativity through producing negative affect (Isen & Baron,

1991) and narrow focus (Amabile, 1983; Sutton & Galunic, 1996).

(Insert figure 1 here)

Similarly, we contend that the form an active avoidance strategy takes is influenced by the

constraints that are salient in the situation. Active avoiders subject to outcome constraints will

understand their work process in terms of higher level action identities and should exhibit greater

flexibility in conceiving of alternative processes for accomplishing it. In contrast, active avoiders

subject to process constraints will think about their work process in terms of lower level action

identities and, in the face of incongruence, should exhibit a greater focus on maintaining an

appearance of complying with a relatively narrowly circumscribed set of activities. In terms of the

former, outcome constraints focus actors and observers on the form of the final product or end

results of work, with less focus on or consensus around the specific steps used to attain those

outcomes. Consequently, actions aimed at reducing aversion in such situations will focus on

"bypassing" undesirable activities in order to conform to outcome expectations. By contrast, the

focus on specific behaviors engendered by process constraints leads the perceived deviation from

expected activities to have greater negative consequences for the actor, and thus obscuring

observation of the discrepancy allows the actor to implicitly change the situation without

experiencing negative consequences. This obscuring behavior takes the form of "pretending," in

which the actor distracts or misleads the observer regarding the departure from expected behavior.

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Pretending is most likely to occur when the desired results of a process are poorly specified or not

easily observable, and thus maintaining the appearance of compliance with expected processes

leads to a positive assessment of the actor's behavior overall.

By way of illustration, take for example the mandate to have clean hands in a food

preparation or healthcare environment to avoid the spread of illness. This type of mandate is often

challenging due to incongruence between employees’ preferences and the situational demands

and/or incongruence between expected work processes and desired outcomes. The incongruence

between preferences and work demands stems from workers disliking washing their hands because

of the resulting skin irritation from the soap or concern about damaging jewelry. Incongruence

between this process demand and desired outcomes stems from the time pressure employees may

experience, especially in the case of healthcare, and may feel that the desired outcome – seeing a

certain number of patients per day – is simply incompatible with the expected process – washing

hands for a protracted period before and after seeing every patient (Nembhard & Edmondson,

2006). Based on our model, when process constraints are more salient, then attention is focused on

more specific, proximal behaviors of hand washing, and non-compliance requires obscuring one's

actions. As a result, pretending behavior is more likely to occur, in which actors maintain the

appearance of compliance even when what they are purportedly doing is not the same as what they

are actually doing. In the case of the hand washing mandate, this will result in workers walking in

the vicinity of the hand washing area, making motions of washing hands, to convey the impression

of compliance. If the outcome expectations are more salient, such as a focus on clean hands coming

in contact with food or patients, then attention would be less on specific hand-washing steps and

more on attainment of the expected outcomes. As a result, actors may bypass certain other steps

(such as touching anything that would make their hands dirty) or invent alternative processes. In the

case of the clean hands mandate, workers may wear gloves, accomplish activities without using

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their hands (e.g. foot- and voice-activated instruments), or invent things like hand gel, which more

quickly accomplishes the same state of cleanliness.

Active avoidance behavior in environments like this can be instructive; rather than simply

issuing additional directives about the importance of hand washing, organizations could harness the

diagnostic information inherent in the pretending and bypassing behaviors in order to create less

aversive processes that will lead to better accomplishment of important objectives. We will return

to this point in a later section of the paper concerning positive consequences of active avoidance.

For now, the example illustrates the difference between pretending and bypassing, and the way in

which the type of constraint that is salient--process versus outcome--influences the type of active

avoidance that occurs--pretending and bypassing.

Throughout this section we have discussed process and outcome constraints independently.

However, organizational life is complex, and certain occupations and tasks may involve both forms

of constraints simultaneously. In highly regulated occupations, for example, strong process and

outcome constraints may co-occur. Furthermore, in some professions, such as academia, different

aspects of the job may entail different types of constraints. For example, an academic may be under

strict outcome constraints when it comes to research, but when it comes to teaching the same person

may be held to both process (managing the syllabus, the classroom, interactions with students) and

outcome constraints (what students learned, their evaluation of course quality). Nonetheless, even

when multiple constraints are present, individuals think about constraints in a manner that leads

outcomes or processes to be more salient (Woolley, 2009a). Thus, we maintain that, even in the

presence of multiple constraints, the active avoidance strategy employed—pretending versus

bypassing—will be driven by the constraints that are most salient in a given context.

In the next section, we will describe these active avoidance strategies in greater detail.

Furthermore, within the categories of pretending and bypassing, we provide examples of both

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behavioral and communicative tactics, since tasks can contain either a behavioral and/or

communicative components, which may be employed separately or in tandem. We describe each in

detail below.

Process Constraints and Pretending

Process constraints and the focus they engender on specific activities result in the sense that

individual employees or actors are being "watched." We know from the literature in social

psychology that in some circumstances, the sense of being watched creates evaluation apprehension

(Markus, 1978) whereas in other circumstances it can fend off the tendencies of social loafing and

lead individuals or groups to work harder (Karau & Williams, 1993). ―Pretending‖ involves the

creation of a dichotomy between one’s private reality and the one represented to observers. In other

words, an actor creates the impression of doing one thing, such as complying with a regulation or

engaging in a certain activity, but he or she is really doing something else. Pretending is largely

motivated by the desire to find alternatives that will avoid provoking a confrontation or negative

interpersonal judgment by overtly defying process expectations. Active avoidance in the presence

of strong process expectations will lead to partial or "loose" compliance as a behavioral tactic and

expressive ambiguity as a communicative tactic, because both of these tactics render ambiguous

the degree of compliance with process expectations. Loose compliance involves maintaining the

behavioral appearance of complying whereas expressive ambiguity involves appearing to agree or

comply in terms of communication. Both are examples of tactics employed to facilitate the

appearance of complying with process expectations.

For example, pretending in the form of loose compliance refers to the execution of a

process in such a way that meets the "letter of the law" but avoids undesirable outcomes or

experiences without evoking a confrontation concerning non-compliance. One example is found in

the grading process used in many educational settings. Instructors institute a grading system as a

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means of giving feedback to students on their performance and to differentiate students from one

another. However, the increasing incidence of grade inflation (Eiszler, 2002) suggests that, though

there is the appearance of a grading system, more and more instructors implement it in such a way

that results in little to no differentiation in the grades assigned, since dealing with unhappy students

who have received a bad grade is a highly aversive experience. Likewise, loose compliance in terms

of industrial safety has been shown to be related to the safety climate (or lack thereof) in an

organization, which is characterized by managers’ attitudes concerning safety (Griffin & Neal,

2000; Zohar, 1980). At the same time, loose compliance can also be credited with the invention of

flex-time work policies that have enabled women to remain active in more areas of the work force.

Current day flex-time policies were preceded by individuals who gradually and covertly shifted

their work hours, sometimes with the help of co-workers who would turn on lights or computer

workstations or punch timecards to create the impression of their presence, until management had a

chance to become comfortable with the idea that work could be accomplished with some degree of

non-overlap in work hours (Avery & Zabel, 2001; Milliken, Martins, & Morgan, 1998; Swart,

1978).

Pretending by engaging in expressive ambiguity is a tactic within the communication

domain that actors employ, sometimes in conjunction with loose compliance, to facilitate the post-

hoc portrayal or interpretation of communication acts as having been in accordance with mandates

or expectations, while avoiding confrontation or discomfort in real-time. Specific forms of this

tactic come in the form of "couching" negative comments in the midst of positive or ambiguous

speech, or "skirting" an issue by talking about related topics while not addressing the contentious

topic directly. The presence of observers demands that an answer be given, but answers are

constructed so as to be interpretable in a multitude of directions, allowing for the re-construal of

meaning after the fact (Weaver, 1986).

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Expressive ambiguity is related to the larger domain of strategic ambiguity, which refers

to the strategic application of ambiguity in terms of both creating and communicating about an

organization’s mission (Eisenberg, 1984). Though the ethics and potential outcomes of strategic

ambiguity have been debated (Markham, 1996; Ulmer & Sellnow, 1997), as well as the

circumstances under which it should be used (Eisenberg & Witten, 1987), one of the touted benefits

is that in certain situations it behooves managers to express an organization’s goals in an ambiguous

manner such that various options remain open and a diversity of viewpoints are fostered. Likewise,

expressive ambiguity enables actors to actively avoid the aversiveness of confronting and

potentially angering important stakeholders while still engaging in communication as required by

the process expectations of the situation. Expressive ambiguity may also facilitate new inventions

when it allows actors to "buy time" in situations that require a long-term, interpersonally sensitive

process. Thus, pretending, and specifically tactics such as expressive ambiguity and loose

compliance, may facilitate accommodation among various parties and interests. We consider the

positive consequences of pretending in more detail later in the paper.

Outcome Constraints and Bypassing

Outcome constraints are generally instituted to hold employees responsible for their results,

often in the form of "pay for performance" systems and goal setting, which can lead to many

positive consequences (Jensen & Meckling, 1976; Locke et al., 1990). Bypassing by engaging in

shortcuts involves the use of an unconventional process for accomplishing a desired end state while

reducing the aversion experienced in the process. Though negative examples of short cuts abound,

such as dishonesty in accounting practices in settings that emphasize outcomes while lacking

oversight of processes (Mazar & Ariely, 2006), shortcuts can also result in the development of tools

and processes that handle required steps more efficiently. Indeed, from Plato’s famous exhortation

about necessity being the mother of invention (Jowett & Campbell, 1941) to early work by

economists about the ways in which inventions are often the byproducts of attempts at process

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improvement (Nelson, 1959), short cuts are known to lead to time-saving and efficient inventions.

Many computer-based tools were motivated by the desire to avoid arduous computational or data

processing tasks and attain desired performance outcomes. Similarly, a whole host of physical tools

(think "electric hammer" or "riding lawn mower") have been innovated with the desire to facilitate

the accomplishment of physically demanding tasks. What these and many other shortcuts have in

common is that they are the result of search processes initiated by actors in the face of an aversive

situation, that subsequently enable the attainment of desired outcomes while reducing the aversion

associated with the process.

Indirect communication in lieu of more direct communication methods is an example of

bypassing in the realm of interpersonal communication in which organizational actors transmit

information in a more unidirectional and indirect manner in order to enhance speed (by reducing the

need to synchronize schedules with recipients) and reduce the opportunities for feedback and

interaction. Indirect communication occurs through the use of messages that are primarily not

delivered face-to-face and that actors assume will be received and attended to by the intended

recipients. The rise in the use of technologies allowing indirect communication (i.e. email,

voicemail, texting, etc.) is an example of bypassing methods that stem from these avoidance

impulses (Kurtzberg, Naquin, & Belkin, 2005; O’Leary & Cummings, 2007). Such technologies

have become particularly popular in contexts lacking norms or process expectations regarding face-

to-face communication (Jarvenpaa & Lang, 2005; Kraut, Rice, Cool, & Fish, 1998), which tend to

be more results-oriented, outcome-focused environments such as manufacturing production and

finance (Mazmanian, Yates, & Orlikowski, 2006). Though certainly not all email or voicemail

communication is the result of avoidance behavior—and people previously avoided quite

successfully using simpler technologies like letters—some have noted the trend that these new

technologies have encouraged the younger generations to forego interpersonal encounters in favor

of these more indirect approaches (Richtel, 2008). More generally speaking, indirect

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communication parallels bypassing in the realm of communication, since it is a way of working

around an aversive interpersonal encounter while accomplishing desired outcomes.

Proposition 2: Aversion interacts with constraint type to influence active avoidance strategy:

The salience of process constraints moderates the degree to which pretending occurs, whereas the

salience of outcome constraints moderates the degree to which bypassing occurs.

OUTCOMES OF ACTIVE AVOIDANCE: EFFICIENCY AND ACCOMMODATION

We maintain that pretending and bypassing can lead to positive outcomes in organizations

by facilitating process inventions that enhance helpful accommodations and efficiency,

respectively. Of course, active avoidance can have negative consequences, and thus there are

important boundary conditions that circumscribe the situations under which positive outcomes may

occur.

The most obvious negative consequence of pretending is dishonesty in organizations.

Indeed, both expressive ambiguity and loose compliance involve an element of dishonesty in that

the truth of the situation is somehow simulated to be unknown, skirted around, or only loosely

undertaken. The most obvious negative consequence of bypassing is poor quality, both tangibly in

terms of products and more intangibly in terms of management. For example, incentivizing

employees on production output when processes for production have been correctly specified (but

are not monitored) can easily lead to the finding of "short cuts" and consequently undesired

variance in the product (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985) or safety incidents (Zohar, 1980).

Thus, the negative results of these active avoidance strategies are real and certainly need to be

acknowledged.

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 Active Avoidance in Organizations

Therefore, the positive outcomes of active avoidance can only accrue when at least two

conditions are present: first, the short- and long-term goals of the organization and the actor are

aligned and, second, the active avoidance strategies pass basic tests of ethics. Regarding goal

alignment, the importance of goal alignment has been examined in a wide range of contexts, with

respect to compensation (Hollensbe & Guthrie, 2000; Jensen & Meckling, 1976), organizational

citizenship behavior (Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983), and job satisfaction and tenure (Guth &

MacMillan, 1986) to name a few examples. With respect to active avoidance, when the goals of an

individual and the organization are aligned, then the cost/benefit analyses driving active avoidance

at the individual level are likely to be aligned with the organization’s interests (Kaplan & Norton,

1996). In this way, the active avoidance behavior facilitates aversion-reduction for the individual

actor but does not detract from organizational goals. Regarding ethicality, our discussion of positive

outcomes of active avoidance is limited to the sphere of ethical behavior, in which selected actions

conform to the commonly accepted ethical tests of generalization and utilitarianism (Hooker, 2008).

Though standards of ethicality might vary somewhat from culture to culture (E. Kennedy &

Lawton, 1996) we maintain that strategies that fail these important ethical tests cannot yield

outcomes that could be broadly construed as beneficial.

Despite the potential for negative implications from bypassing and pretending, we also

maintain that, within the boundary conditions mentioned above, active avoidance can facilitate

efficiency, due to bypassing, and accommodation, due to pretending, which may benefit both

individual employees and organizations. More specifically, bypassing can lead to process

inventions that more efficiently accomplish desired outcomes, and pretending can lead to inventive

ways of accommodating sources of situational incongruence. In this section, we develop

propositions concerning the ways in which bypassing and pretending can lead to efficiency and

accommodation inventions, respectively, on an individual level. In the section that follows, we

develop a proposition about the ways in which organizations can harness the positive results of

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 Active Avoidance in Organizations

active avoidance and, by doing so, foster a diverse environment in terms of both task solutions and

management processes.

Bypassing and Efficiency

Organizational innovation depends upon invention, which is an original solution resulting

from the synthesis of information about a need or want and information about the means by which

the need or want may be met (Marquis, 1969; Schmookler, 1966; Utterback, 1971; Utterback &

Abernathy, 1975). Innovation is thus an invention that has been implemented in a product or a

process (Utterback, 1971). The search for alternatives that underlies active avoidance can raise the

probability that new solutions will be invented, and generating a larger pool of solutions can

increase the chances that organizational innovation will occur.

The notion that employees can and should invent novel and efficient means of performing

tasks is not new; indeed, setting challenging goals while leaving open the means for achieving

them has been argued to be an effective way to draw out employees' knowledge and skills

(Hackman, 2002). Similarly, task revision, or deviating from the prescribed task, will lead to

innovation and improved performance when the work role is inadequately specified (Staw &

Boettger, 1990). We argue that bypassing can lead to inventions that improve the efficiency or

effectiveness of a work process while holding the outcome of the activity constant. For example, in

1970, unbeknownst to their instructors initially, two business school students developed an

alternative method producing correct answers for their accounting homework more quickly and

accurately using a computer-based tool. These students invented Visicalc, the precursor to our

modern spreadsheets. Rather than completing the process by hand, they invented a more efficient

way to get the right answers in much less time. This invention exemplifies the potential for positive

benefits from bypassing, which leads to greater efficiency by modifying an aversive task to make it

less aversive and more efficient. Bypassing can lead to invention when individuals experience

21
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

aversion while working within an outcome constraint, using processes that are only loosely

specified or not observable.

To be sure, it is possible that in some cases bypassing could result in less efficient

processes when the typical approach is the most efficient but aversive. However, work in

individual cognitive psychology and group performance both point to the dominant tendency of

individuals and groups to drift toward alternatives that are less effortful (Ebenbach & Keltner,

1998; Johnson et al., 2006; Orbell & Dawes, 1991). Furthermore, the major commodity for trade

within organizations is time, where employers and employees barter for individual effort and

attention (Ocasio, 1997; Schriber & Gutek, 1987). Any technique that allows the actor to spend less

time on a particular task gives him/her additional autonomy for an activity of his or her own

choosing and/or to incorporate additional and more desirable organizational activities into his or her

role. Thus we argue that in most situations, the incentives are present for individuals to bypass in

ways that enhance the efficiency of their work.

Proposition 3: Bypassing will lead to process inventions that facilitate more efficient

accomplishment of specified outcomes.

Pretending and Accommodation

Accommodation refers to the adaptation or reconciliation of two or more points of

difference (Merriam-Webster, 1991). As situations demand different approaches or as workers with

diverse needs or perspectives approach the same situation, it will frequently be the case that the

same process will not fit them equally. Though organizations often create process constraints in an

attempt to ensure fairness across employees or to ensure a certain level of coordination and

consistency of performance, these process constraints may exist at odds with individual or

situation-specific needs. Similarly, despite all of the praise heaped on to "straight talk," some

22
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

interpersonal differences cannot be resolved. Thus, actors in organizations frequently find

themselves in a bind -- if they proceed as they explicitly "ought" to, it will leave situational

incongruence unresolved, but if they make explicit that they will not proceed, it will bring trouble

in a different form. So what is one to do? Pretending enables actors to accommodate local needs

without creating system-wide upheaval.

For example, employees may pretend about their whereabouts when certain personal issues

take precedence, such as medical appointments or attending an event at a child’s school,

particularly in situations in which there are no official policies about flex-time or personal time.

These same individuals may also make up for lost work time through working at home after hours,

again technically in violation of policy in many organizations. This pretending behavior, especially

when organizational and individual goals are aligned, can enable employees to accommodate the

various demands in their lives in a manner that avoids confrontation for themselves or their

manager over policy violations. Likewise, people in organizations do not always get along with

their co-workers on a personal level, but the requirements of their work are inherently interactive.

Pretending helps employees to manage these relationships such that they remain workable without

aggravating underlying tensions, which may involve issues that are not under anyone's control or

may not be appropriate to address in the work context. For example, process expectations often

exist in the workplace concerning employee socializing, and employees may often feel implicitly (if

not explicitly) required to attend such events even when they do not enjoy doing so. Pretending may

help employees deal with these situations, either through the use of expressive ambiguity so as to

avoid any confrontations or uncomfortable conversations, or through the use of loose compliance,

i.e. by arriving late and leaving early and thus only loosely complying with the expectation to be

present in the social situation. We will return to this issue in the next section concerning the ways

in which active avoidance can be diagnostic for organizations and lead to positive systemic

changes.

23
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

Proposition 4: Pretending will facilitate the accommodation of competing demands and/or

tensions in the work environment.

Harnessing the Positive Consequences of Active Avoidance: Systems Observation

At the organizational level, harnessing the positive consequences of active avoidance

ultimately leads to a greater diversity of invented solutions and management processes. Such

diversity is welcome given that most workplaces have become more demographically diverse, and

the needs and demands of organizational work are likewise diverse and sometimes incompatible. In

the task domain, active avoidance can foster innovation through the proliferation of multiple local

inventions that increase efficiency. These inventions are stimulated by the search for alternatives to

adapt to constraints and are optimized to be useful to the user. Moreover, these inventions may

prove to be useful to others in the organization as well and lead to organization-wide innovations,

and be better than those that would have arisen if more explicit change-oriented processes had been

engaged to collectively search for alternatives in the absence of such individual inventions. In the

interpersonal domain, active avoidance can result in local variations in work processes that

accommodate the idiosyncratic needs of a situation. For instance, pretending may be beneficial in

organizations in the interpersonal realm, particularly when it comes to overlooking minor

differences that may otherwise provoke unproductive or relationship-harming conflict. In the arena

of interpersonal communication, research on cultural differences in conflict management styles has

shown that managers from the U.S. tend to employ a competing, direct style whereas managers

from Asia tend to employ an avoiding conflict style (Morris et al., 1998). These cultural differences

have been shown to hinder positive working relationships and outcomes (Graham & Sano, 1991;

Hofstede, 1980). In such circumstances, the encouragement of pretending with an eye toward

cultural sensitivity, i.e. employing tactics such as expressive ambiguity in order to allow the other

party to save face rather than engaging in direct confrontation, may lead to positive outcomes in an

organization, especially when long-term relationships are crucial. Similar strategies of pretending in

24
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

the face of otherwise conflict-provoking circumstances have been shown to have beneficial effects

in preserving relationships even in the absence of cultural differences (Pike & Sillars, 1985).

The degree to which an organization has developed the ability to observe and diagnose

active avoidance behavior at a system level will moderate the extent to which they can capitalize on

the information value that active avoidance behavior provides. Others have pointed out that

avoidance can have positive signaling effects in organizations (Piderit, 2000) as individuals with

more local knowledge and a different vantage point can draw attention to those organizational

processes that are maladaptive for their particular context. Organizations can harness the value of

these local level inventions through the development of system-level observational tools. Since

individuals have elected to engage in active avoidance rather than direct confrontation of a situation

that requires change, direct reporting or questioning of any individual about his or her behavior is

unlikely to yield useful solutions. Furthermore, confronting a single individual about his or her

active avoidance behavior is unlikely to provide good, diagnostic information about how

widespread vs. idiosyncratic an issue really is. However, system-level observation may suggest

areas in which active avoidance is occurring and the manner in which existing processes could be

modified. Though system-level observation could be easily interpreted as a "Big Brother"

mechanism for employee monitoring, the goal of this type of mechanism is exactly the opposite--

rather than monitoring individuals, managers can make more general observations about systemic

issues. Doing so equates to a form of ―swarm intelligence‖ – evaluating the quality of a new

nesting location not because one individual thinks it is great, but because a series of individuals are

beginning to move in a particular direction (Bonabeau, Dorigo, & Theraulaz, 1999).

Returning to the example of hand washing described earlier in the paper, monitoring of

individual employees may be difficult and may ultimately not solve a problem (e.g. lack of proper

hand washing) that is chronic throughout an organization. Instead, managers could monitor soap

levels in different locations, or paper towel usage (a system indicator) as well as outcome indicators

25
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

in different locations (i.e. infection rates associated with different rooms in the hospital).

Furthermore, rather than interpreting active avoidance in this domain as deviant behavior by

individuals, managers could use the information about active avoidance to decide whether it is a

local problem or a system-wide problem that needs to be addressed. Atul Gawande, in his book

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, recounts a fascinating success story of a Veterans

Administration hospital in Pennsylvania in which the rate of bacterial infection was reduced almost

to zero as a result of significantly improved hand washing rates. The process of improving this

behavior can be interpreted as resulting from observation of active avoidance and the use of that

information to make systemic changes to processes in the hospital in order to make hand washing

less aversive – in that case, by cutting down the amount of time needed to accomplish the necessary

level of hand hygiene.

Pretending behavior can also provide organizations with diagnostic information and enable

organizations to make process changes that will ultimately foster a more diverse workforce. An

organization in which people are able to accommodate their various needs and demands on could

operate more effectively as a diverse organization. Returning to the example of loose compliance

with work hours in order to accommodate work and family needs discussed above, the observation

of this behavior could lead organizations to make systemic changes, i.e. introducing flex-time

policies, which ultimately facilitate the hiring and retention of a more diverse workforce. These

policies have been shown to have predominantly positive effects on work outcomes (Baltes, Briggs,

Huff, Wright, & Neuman, 1999). Furthermore, employees are more likely to be successful in

getting flex-time schedules following active avoidance behavior versus making a direct request

(Hochschild, 2001). Current employees who gradually (but implicitly) shift their work hours while

demonstrating that they can still be effective are generally more successful in negotiating these

arrangements than new employees who attempt to directly ask for them.

26
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

Thus, cultivating system-level observation of the behaviors and inventions of employees

who are resolving situational incongruence will provide an organization with better information

about where change is needed as well as potential alternative solutions. For example, if an

individual complains loudly to management that the work hours are unreasonable, it is difficult for

management to determine how widespread the problem is or what is a workable solution. By

contrast, if management observes how full the parking lot is at different hours, how busy the

meeting rooms are, and the amount of computer network and telephone usage over the course of the

day, then they can determine when the need for worker overlap is greatest and where flexibility

might be appreciated. They may also observe some alternative techniques that workers innovate to

handle demands from outside of the office which are beneficial for everyone (Morgan 1977). If

instead they chastise individual workers who are not at their desk or attempt in other ways to

observe or enforce requirements locally, they might force workers to engage in some of the other

behaviors described above (withdrawal, deviance, etc.), which are not as beneficial for the

organization, thereby ostracizing some workers and not discovering more effective ways of

operating that would facilitate greater diversity. Thus, we argue that observation of patterns of

behavior across people and over time provides better insight into difficulties and potential solutions

than does the interrogation or correction of a single avoider and/or the open invitation to individuals

to voice complaints without evidence of solutions. Consequently, we propose that system-level

observation will moderate the degree to which organizations obtain diagnostic information about

which problems require addressing and which solutions might be more appropriate.

Proposition 5: The adoption of system-level observation and diagnostic capability will

moderate the degree to which organizations recognize and capitalize on the positive outcomes of

efficiency and accommodation resulting from individual-level active avoidance.

27
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

Conclusion

We have introduced a new construct—active avoidance—that involves the implicit search

for and use of alternatives by individuals motivated to reduce the negative experience of aversion

due to situational incongruence in organizations. Unlike traditional conceptualizations of

avoidance, active avoidance does not entail passivity or inhibition, but rather active strategies to

pursue alternatives in light of aversive circumstances. Furthermore, we have argued that process-

versus outcome-focused constraints will interact with aversion and determine whether active

avoidance will entail pretending versus bypassing. We also have proposed two ways in which

active avoidance can have positive ramifications for organizations in the forms of process

inventions that facilitate efficiency and accommodation on the individual level, which ultimately

translate into a greater diversity of solutions and the possibility of better diagnostic processes on the

organizational level.

Some may read our discussion here as overly pessimistic about organizational voice and

learning, and as such, we would like to emphasize the point that we see it not as either/or, but rather

when to use one approach versus another. In situations in which problems and potential solutions

are unfamiliar and possibly idiosyncratic, active avoidance will allow individuals and their

organizations to pursue temporary local fixes. As situations evolve and it becomes clear that a

problem is relatively widespread and persistent, then raising those issues as well as pointing to the

kinds of solutions individuals have invented can facilitate a more productive discussion. Thus we

see active avoidance as a potential precursor to and facilitator of more productive, solution-focused

and change-oriented discussions in organizations. Active avoidance can also help employees cope

with aversive situations and prevent more irreparable actions, such as withdrawal and neglect.

A broader understanding of active avoidance will lead to research about active forms of

avoidance in organizations that have not been captured previously in organizational research. One

28
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

of the reasons that this area has been understudied is that action is much easier to identify and

measure than inaction, and previous conceptualizations of avoidance involved inaction and

withdrawal. Not only was this a narrow conceptualization of avoidance in organizations, but it is

also difficult to study this conceptualization of avoidance empirically using traditional methods

such as self-report measures, since social desirability biases impede reporting of outright avoidance

and presumably leads to floor effects. However, measurement of the active avoidance strategies

described in this paper will enable researchers to obtain a deeper understanding of avoidance

behaviors in organizations. Better recognition of the existence of active avoidance and measuring

its prevalence will help advance the precision of organizational research.

Finally, a better understanding of active avoidance and its potential benefits may create a

more effective bridge between theory and practice (Pfeffer, 1993). Studying active avoidance is an

example of the ways in which organizational research can make a significant contribution by

building on existing psychological principles such as avoidance, but also considering the ways in

which organizational contexts create unique spaces for these psychological phenomena to be

manifested in different ways. The demands of the work domain, both in terms of characteristics of

organizations as well as fulfillment of the basic need for employment, lead to behaviors that are

particular to that context. Avoiding pain—especially when "pain" manifests itself in the form of

demanding organizational constraints —may entail pretending and/or bypassing, particularly when

traditionally passive avoidance techniques, such as withdrawal and delay, are not possible or

desirable. In this way, future research on active avoidance has the potential to better inform a

realistic portrait of people's experiences in organizations. Finally, a better understanding of active

avoidance can aid managers to harness the potential benefits of resulting process inventions,

leading to a more diverse organization that fosters more effective processes and solutions.

29
 Active Avoidance in Organizations

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FIGURE 1

Model of proposed antecedents, moderators and outcomes of active avoidance

Process Active Process

constraints
Avoidance Inventions
Pretending Accommodatio
Incongruence
AvAvoidance
-induced
n
Aversion
Bypassing Efficiency
Outcome
constraints

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