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This dissertation investigates the relationship between organizational decision- making and rare but salient events. It particularly addresses organizational conditions under which members collectively choose inaction, even when they recognize the problems that may lead to rare but salient events. These events have a substantial impact on people’s lives. However, explaining the causal relationship in a simple, straightforward manner is difficult with existing organizational studies due to theoretical concerns and approaches peculiar to them, including the bias toward organizational successes. As a result, the simple,

straightforward explanation is a missing puzzle piece in a landscape of otherwise rich organizational studies. To fill in this gap, this dissertation focuses on members’ interactions during ordinary and routine days, a “gray zone” in which members notice potential problems but no clear and imminent threat to organizational performance has appeared yet. It also aims to explain why members’ recognition of the problems does not lead to action at the

organizational level.

For these purposes, this dissertation mainly draws on social psychological theories, and ABMs have been developed from them. In these models, agents, which are the

operationalization of organization members, interact with each other following different sets of decision rules. The decision rules are the operationalization of organizational conditions, i.e., how favorable it is to speak up on and take action against the problems. By controlling

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the sets of rules and the distributions of the values of agents’ attributes – opinions, match of expertise, and power and status –, choices at the individual and organizational levels across different models are compared. Agents’ individual choices are measured with changes in their individual opinions. In contrast, organizational-level choices are measured with changes in the mean of all agents’ opinions, if they do not converge to one value. If they converge, the measurement is the value itself, which is equal to the mean of all agents’ opinions under the convergence.

In this dissertation, only the minimalist models have been run on the simulation toolkit, whereas thought experiments are used for models that are more complicated. This distinction is due to a concern that running many complex ABMs at full scale may be counterproductive in understanding mechanisms behind outcomes of the models20. In addition, running such simulations will be a luxury if thought experiments can provide sufficient insights to answer the research questions. Despite this limitation, the ABS and experiments have led to interesting findings, especially about how organizational inaction emerges from members’ interactions during ordinary and routine days. In the paragraphs that follow, I first explain those findings and develop propositions about organizational causes of rare but salient events. Then, I argue what these propositions imply for theories of

organizational studies. Finally, I explain what further research is necessary.

Organizational Causes of Rare but Salient Events: Findings and Propositions

The outcomes of the experiments in Chapters 4 and 5 show two general trends. First, as organizational conditions become less favorable to speaking up and taking action, the

20 _{Appendix C shows an example of the technical complexities that those models and the simulation may pose,} which is the JavaScript code of one of the full-scale models. In running the steady-state simulation with random values, it is also necessary to run these codes multiple times (for all different models) under different conditions and to make statistical analyses relevant to the type of simulation. This requirement also makes the coding more complex with the necessity of a batch file and comparator files.

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opinions of members who are given the most attention but give the least attention to others tend to determine organizational-level choices. In this chapter, members who hold these opinions are called “the detached” for the sake of convenience. Depending on the

organizational conditions, the detached include non-experts, members with higher power and status than their colleagues, and those with more or fewer peers. Second, as the conditions become less favorable to speaking up and taking action, it is less likely that a consensus is reached at the organizational level. For example, if members pay more attention to the opinions of members with the same power and status, then an organizational-level consensus rarely emerges from discussions. These trends first depend on the designs of the ABMs and the controlled conditions created in the ABS. However, as long as the controlled conditions hold, the outcomes from these designs provide insights that are helpful in answering the questions of this dissertation.

First, it is necessary to explain three categories of “the detached”. The first category consists of members without appropriate expertise. Their influence becomes conspicuous when they refrain from breaking silence because of their lack of expertise. There are

exceptions to this influence, however. One example is when experts succumb to the effects of potential embarrassment of the bystander effect. In this case, the opinions of not only non- experts but also experts who do not initiate interactions influence organizational-level choices. The other example is when experts practically disregard non-experts’ opinions due to the psychosocial law of social impact theory. One of the agents’ decision rules based on the law dictates that experts should pay attention to counterparts’ expertise but not their power and status. Under this condition, non-experts’ opinions have an impact only if they are biased toward either action or inaction. These exceptions suggest that members without the

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appropriate expertise become influential not simply because they lack the expertise. Rather, they become influential because they do not initiate interactions and change their opinions even if experts contact them. In short, they are detached.

The second category of the detached is members with higher power and status. Their opinions become influential when members who initiate interactions pay attention to power and status differences among their counterparts. Under this condition, members’ expertise is not as important as their power and status. The influence of powerful and prestigious

members depends on one-sidedness in members’ efforts to ask for others’ opinions. As their power and status increases, the number of their peers and superiors decreases. Thus, if members seek the opinions of these peers and superiors, those with higher power and status are likely to have fewer counterparts. In other words, as a member becomes more powerful and prestigious, more members ask for his/her opinions, but s/he is less likely to ask for others’ opinions. As a result, the opinions of members with higher power and status do not change in relation to others’ opinions. Then, the lack of changes results in an impact on organizational-level choices. Regardless of the willingness to discuss potential problems, members with higher power and status tend to become the detached.

The third category of the detached is members with more or fewer peers. Power and status structure is also important under the organizational condition in which members interact only with their peers. Under this condition, members with more peers become influential in most cases. In other cases, the psychosocial law causes the power of their attention to attenuate, and those with no peers claim the influence. In the former cases, members weigh the opinions of their counterparts based on their power and status. They give the same weight to peers’ opinions as to their own; thus, the value of peers’ opinions does not

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fluctuate regardless of the order of their encounters. As discussions continue, the opinions of members with the same power and status cluster and the largest cluster forms around the opinions of the members with the most peers. In contrast, in the latter cases, members may weigh their peers’ opinions less due to the attenuation of their attention. Thus, more peers indicate that they devalue each other’s opinion more largely than otherwise. As a result, an individual without peers becomes the most influential member in determining organizational- level choices. These contradictory outcomes have one thing in common. The opinions of the detached are less likely to change than those of the involved, and the unchanging opinions determine the outcomes at the organizational level. Even in the former cases, members exclude subordinates and superiors from discussions by clustering with peers. This exclusion gives their opinions more power that determines organizational-level choices.

The detached share a few behaviors across the three categories. First, their behaviors seem to be smart. At the stage when they must decide whether it is acceptable to speak up in the organization, they choose not to do so because they are sensitive to organizational

conditions. They pay attention to others’ behavior, reflect on expertise of the self, and decide to remain quiet regardless of opinions about potential problems. Second, their behaviors seem to be stubborn once members who are less cautious at that stage break silence and begin to seek others’ opinions. The detached do not change their opinions even if the less cautions contact them. It appears as if the detached never falter once they choose to remain silent and distant. In contrast, members who decide to break silence seem to be confident. They clear social-psychological obstacles posed by the bystander effect, social impact theory, or other group mentalities. In their eyes, others seem to support their interpretations of the potential problems. They also believe in their expertise to interpret the problems and find

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solutions. However, these members are not so overconfident that they disregard others’ opinions and organizational conditions. They are vigilant enough to pay attention to the power and status structure in the organization and others’ expertise. This vigilance of members who initiate interactions allows the detached to influence them, regardless of whether the detached initiate interactions of their own. In other words, the models in Chapters 4 and 5 present different behaviors and decisions between the smart but stubborn and the confident but vigilant. In this regard, the question of this dissertation is variations in organizational decisions due to the difference.

Despite the explanations above, it is counterintuitive that the detached, not the involved, are influential in determining organizational action or inaction. However, the influence is understandable because the models represent members’ interactions long before high-velocity situations emerge. The models and experiments in this dissertation describe members’ decisions not in an emergency but in a “gray zone”. Changes in individual members’ opinions indicate the shift of their common understanding during ordinary and routine days. In this phase of rare but salient events, problems present only potential danger. In the “gray zone”, members have freedom to remain quiet and/or favor inaction. This option distinguishes between the detached and the involved, and their difference determines choices, or the common understanding, at the organizational level. If the detached favor inaction in the face of potential problems, the opinion determines the common understanding. The common understanding represents how responsive members and the organization are to potential problems.

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