How conformists can spark creativity

In a number of columns I've written over the years, I have criticized the idea held by many non-academics that scholarly research in general — and research on organizations and management in particular — merely establishes the obvious.

I came across a paper recently in the Academy of Management Journal — the leading outlet for scholarly empirical research on organizational behavior — that would certainly fit into the category of research that does not establish the obvious.

The finding? A team's ability to innovate is enhanced by having some team members who are conformists. The paper, titled "The Effect of Conformists and Attentive-to-Detail Members on Team Innovation: Reconciling the Innovation Paradox," was written by Ella Miron-Spektor, an organizational psychologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and two Israeli colleagues. It examines work teams at a large Israeli defense company — so it's not lab research using college undergrads — that are charged with developing advanced technologies in areas such as microelectronics and communications.

The authors asked members of different teams about each member's cognitive style. In particular, the researchers asked questions to tap members' creative and conformist orientations. For creativity, people were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with statements such as "I have a lot of creative ideas" and "I prefer tasks that enable me to think creatively." To measure what the authors call conformity, they asked questions such as "I try not to oppose team members" and "I adapt myself to the system."

The authors also asked group supervisors (using an established research method) to divide 100 points among four levels of innovation that their teams had attained on their projects as a whole, ranging from "duplicating existing technologies" (the lowest) to "developing breakthrough technologies based on fundamentally new concepts or principles" (the highest). Using that scale, each team received a "radical innovation" score.

Not surprisingly, the researchers found that the higher the percentage of creatives on a team, the higher the team's supervisor-designated radical innovation score. However, having a higher proportion of conformists in a group also promoted radical innovation. The effect was non-linear: Moving from a below-average percentage of conformists on a team (compared with all the teams in the sample) to an average proportion dramatically increased a team's radical innovation score. But moving from an average proportion to a significantly above-average one produced only a small further increase in radical innovation.

Read the full Executive Handbook package

The study found evidence for two ways conformists help teams become more innovative. The more conformists on a team, the higher the team's perception of its own potency (i.e., its ability to accomplish its tasks), and team potency was associated with the ability to be innovative. And the more conformists on a team, the better the team did at implementing its creative ideas.

A general lesson in all this — and one that is associated with the work of recently deceased team management scholar Richard Hackman — is that managers tend to pay too much attention to team processes and not enough attention to setting up a team for success before it begins work, including choosing the right mix of skills and temperaments for team membership.

And specifically in this situation, it is intuitive to think that if you want a creative team, the main thing you need to do is get a lot of creative people on it. This fascinating research suggests that to keep the ship moving forward, the tempestuous seas of creativity should be tempered by the ballast of conformity.

Posted on Feb 08, 2013 at 2:19 PM2 comments

Welcome back, FAR 13.5

Simplified acquisition procedures for smaller purchases have returned to the contracting officer's toolbox. (GSA image)

One of the products of the procurement reform efforts of the 1990's was regulatory changes to streamline procedures for smaller buys and contracts for commercial items. There were two basic philosophies behind these changes:

1)  to reduce requirements on the government in awarding these contracts, speeding up the notoriously slow government procurement process;

2)  to reduce government-unique requirements for contractors, mainly to encourage commercial companies, particularly smaller firms with cutting-edge technologies, to do business with the government.

The major regulatory products of this effort were changes to Part 12 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) – rules for buying commercial items – and to Part 13 – rules for smaller purchases under $150,000 in value.

As part of all this, in 1994 a test program was established to allow the use of the simplified procedures for smaller purchases up to a $5 million buy (later raised to $6.5 million) if the government was buying a commercial item. The test program was regularly renewed by Congress, but never made permanent. Then, in 2011 it was not renewed (stories differ about whether this was an oversight or a conscious decision). However, in this year's DOD authorization bill, the test program has been reborn (though again extended for two years, not made permanent). So now agencies once again are able to use these simplified procedures.

This may sound like a lot of regulatory gobbledygook; why should anybody care? It is true that the procedures for commercial items in Part 12 of the FAR already streamline the procurement process compared to procurements for non-commercial items. (Government newbies who fret about procurement being too slow should be aware that things used to be much worse.)

However, the smaller-purchase procedures authorized by the test program do allow the process effectively to be speeded up – as DOD noted in its request to restore the authority, including in a contingency contracting environment where speed is particularly important. Relative weights for evaluation factors (such as price and past performance) do not need to be specified in the solicitation, and evaluation itself is simplified. Past performance judgments may be based on the contracting officer's own knowledge or based on customer surveys, rather than requiring a more formal process. Some agencies – although the FAR does not specify this – started refusing to use reverse auctions for contracts over $100,000 after the test program was stopped.

There has been controversy over the years about the second strand of these 1990's-era efforts, involving reduction of requirements for contractors, particularly regarding submission of cost data. (Critics worried that many military-like products supplied by defense contractors were being classified as commercial items and that the lack of cost data made it harder for the government to get a good deal on such items.) Whatever one's views on that debate, people should be able to agree, I think, that allowing the government to move quickly and with fewer administrative resources to buy the kinds of off-the-shelf products and services that are the backbone of this regulatory authority is a good thing.

I would love to hear views from frontline buyers in the government about the practical differences between standard commercial item buying using Part 12 and the more-simplified buying now re-authorized in the FAR 13.5 test program.

Posted on Feb 05, 2013 at 2:19 PM0 comments

Hopes and fears: China edition

As this recent daytime photo shows, Beijing air pollution has reached extreme levels. (photo by Alastair Thornton)

During the inauguration, I blogged about the scenarios, both hopeful and pessimistic, that a number of Democratic friends attending the events had sketched for the next four years. One blog reader noted in a response that China too has new leadership -- although they are beginning a ten-year term, unmarred by any election in between -- and suggested I ask some Chinese about their hopes and worries the next time I was in China.

As luck would have it, I was about to speak to a group of Chinese university students under the auspices of the China Future Leaders program. So I did.

What did these university students say?

Generally, their answers did not surprise me. The most common two hopes the students had for China under its new leader Xi Jingping were for a reduction in inequality and a reduction in corruption. I guess I wasn't surprised because these have been two themes Xi himself has emphasized as goals for his rule -- though it is interesting that the students have basically accepted Xi's own priorities. Both are huge sources of discontent in China, and they are connected. Many senior government and party officials gain enormous wealth through corruption, and people are increasingly annoyed. Indeed, Xi, in his own version of an inaugural address, correctly noted that past Chinese dynasties have typically fallen because of corruption, and stated that if the Communist Party couldn't reduce corruption, it might fall from power as well.

The two dominant worries -- pollution and the danger of a war with Japan -- were a little more surprising. The recent pollut -- ion nightmares in Beijing -- where pollution levels were literally "off the charts," worse than the measurement system recognizes -- have finally made more Chinese realize that the disgusting, sickening pollution is not "fog." Here again, the government changed its tune and did not try to cover up the recent pollution catastrophes, going so far as to make the Beijing pollution nightmare the lead story on the evening CCTV news. (I picked up a copy of China Daily, China's quasi-official English-language newspaper, at the USAirways Club in Washington Wednesday afternoon, and the front page featured a sickening picture of the pollution in Tiananmen Square -- here's a screenshot of the story and picture -- and an editorial that called the pollution "appalling.") But this is the first time these university student groups have expressed clear concern about pollution.

The worries about war with Japan were even more surprising, because I had actually asked the student group that came last summer how many were worried about the danger of war with Japan over territorial disputes, and virtually nobody was. This time, about half the group was worried there would be a war between China and Japan over the next decade.

A few students -- but this was definitely a minority -- used the discussion to express hopes that China would become more democratic. I asked the students what their sources of information about the United States were, and one girl said she liked to read books about the U.S. constitution. Several of the students are planning to become journalists, and about three-quarters of them knew about the recent fight between journalists at the reformist Southern Weekend newspaper and the local Communist Party; one student said her hope for the next decade was elimination of censorship.

Posted on Jan 31, 2013 at 2:19 PM1 comments