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Positive Deviance
Samuel Mayanja
1
, Joseph M. Ntayi
2
and
J. C. Munene
2
1
School of Postgraduate Studies and Research,
Cavendish University Uganda, Kampala, Uganda
2
Makerere University Business School, Kampala,
Uganda
Synonyms
Abberrance;Deviation;Divergence
Definitions
Positive deviance: refers to a behavioral and
social change approach which is premised on the
observation that in any context, certain individ-
uals confronting similar challenges, constraints,
and resource deprivations to their peers, will
nonetheless employ uncommon but successful
behaviors or strategies to achieve their objectives.
Deviant employees: is someone whose behav-
ior falls far outside of organization norms.
Constructive deviance: voluntary behavior
that violates significant organizational norms and
thus contributes to the wellbeing of an organiza-
tion, its members, or both.
Policy: a course or principle of action adopted
or proposed by an organization or individual.
Introduction
Organizations have employees who tend to devi-
ate from norms, come up with different ways of
doing things to increase their competitiveness.
The effects of deviant behaviors in the organiza-
tion have economical, sociological, psychologi-
cal, and anthropological implications. Positive
deviance (constructive deviance) is a behavior
that deviates from the norms of the reference
group and has positive effects on the organization.
It is an endogenous source of organizational cre-
ativity that has been shown to be powerful tool for
learning and change. It is positive in terms of
intention, effects, and conforms to hyper norms.
It is not harmful to other employees or organiza-
tion as a whole.
The fundamental success of the positive devi-
ance approach depends on getting the organiza-
tion to: define its own problem based on context,
develop and use its own information to discover
the scale of the problem and any positive deviants,
determine whether the successful practices are in
detail to be understood by other employees,
design practical ways of spreading and sharing
these practices among the employees, and dissem-
inate the practices among other employees to
replicate them.
Positive Deviance can be used when a problem
meets several criteria, which are (1) the problem is
not merely technical, (2) that other solutions have
not worked, and (3) that there is a commitment in
the organization/community to address the
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
A. Farazmand (ed.), Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3965-1
problem (Pascale et al. 2011). Within Positive
Deviance, the focus is on the positive outliers of
the normal distribution. The Positive Deviance
approach challenges managers to think outside
of the dominant frameworks. Therefore, the Pos-
itive Deviance approach is an asset-method.
The organization policies guide the individual
behavior and practices to have harmony. Positive
deviant behaviors have a greater tendency to
resign, and develop stress related problems and
low morale because their ideas may not be
accepted by management and fellow employees.
Positive deviant employees tend to experience
low self-esteem, an increase in fear and lack of
confidence at work, as well as physical and psy-
chological pain. Together with these negative out-
comes, deviant behaviors of employees can also
be functional and constructive. For example, vio-
lating organizational norms by demonstrating
deviant behaviors can serve as a source of inno-
vation and creativity, thus contributing to the
organization’s competitive advantage as well as
to the societal well-being.
Constructive Deviance
Constructive deviance is voluntary behavior that
violates significant organizational norms and thus
contributes to the well-being of an organization,
its members, or both. Despite the fact that these
behaviors are sometimes impermissible by the
managerial level, they assist the organization in
achieving its objectives. These behaviors can be
divided into two main categories. The first, inter-
personal constructive deviance, is directed at indi-
viduals and comprises behaviors such as
disobeying managerial orders in order to improve
organizational processes. The second, organiza-
tional constructive deviance, is directed at the
organization and comprises two types of behav-
iors: innovative behaviors aimed at helping the
organization finding creative ways to solve prob-
lems and behaviors that challenge existing norms
in order to help the organization breaking rules in
order to solve clients’problems. Constructive
deviance does not embarrass the employee and
hence enables direct measuring through self-
reports.
Attributes of Positive Deviance
Uncommon Practices
Uncommon practices and disagreements create
freedom among employees to make use of their
ability and judgment innovatively, even when
they deviate from the norms (Albanna and Heeks
2019; Kibirango et al. 2018). When employees
deviate from the norms, they are capable of
boosting their creativity while addressing pre-
vailing challenges, generate more spontaneous
ideas, come up with new experiences, and venture
creations. Uncommon practices develop a high
degree of resonance interaction and not predation
that requires individuals with different back-
grounds, sets of experiences to connect in a very
meaningful way to access resources from entre-
preneurial networks. Mertens and Recker (2017)
argue that a common assumption in most of these
studies is that divergent opinions emerge sponta-
neously with elements of the environment, the
person or the interaction between both making
this emergence more or less likely. However,
Hendryadi and Suryani (2019) argue that leaders
can also actively stimulate divergent opinions,
where managers have leadership skills, which
may not be the case among small-medium orga-
nizations in developing countries because of
bureaucratic culture.
In this case, heterogeneity, the vast diversity of
components, agents, and parts involved in an
ongoing variety of distinct interactions with
others, is one of the important features of complex
leadership systems that manage employees with
uncommon practices. This is true for an organiza-
tion with the presence of leadership that can oper-
ate and coordinate different individuals with
different background and informational differ-
ences. This is still a challenge among small orga-
nizations with individuals who happen to possess
opposing view-points since it is difficult to chal-
lenge the structures of small-medium organiza-
tions where the business owner is likely to be
part of every decision made.
2 Positive Deviance
Novelty Experiments
Novelty experiments can produce unique experi-
ments that have the potential to become seeds for
unprecedented organizational action. Innovative
behavior or tactics are evaluated, scrutinized,
and tried before they are made accessible to all
or considered for implementation. Creativity and
problem solving are important elements of action
that enable the emergence of novelty. The novelty
to be successful, rules are changed in ways that
enable the convergence of disparate, sometimes
conflicting individual perspectives, preferences,
and activities into effective and predictable col-
lective action (Mayanja et al. 2019). During
periods of uncertainty, reinforcing feedback is
offered to certain process fluctuations through
amplifying actions that seem to offer promising
new ways to bring back stability. In this way, new
structures grow through the gradual accretion of
constructive deviations that work. Experiments to
acquire resources produce information; feedback
(under promising conditions) leads to significant
expected value with regards the resources that
could be discovered. This positive feedback loop
is generative of possible future ecological niches
for the system. However, if risks and rewards are
not properly recognized and modeled, this feed-
back may end up not being beneficial to the
organization.
New Knowledge Values
New knowledge values is when employees
observe how new ideas, knowledge, and innova-
tions are formed from divergent opinions in an
institution. Employees who notice and observe
how new ideas, knowledge, and innovations
evolve are likely to attach different meaning to
information. Without new knowledge value,
employees with no differences, social network
agents would disseminate more of the same infor-
mation along the network (Mayanja et al. 2019).
The new knowledge value created by manage-
ment and employees help in identifying new
opportunities, which are exploited using the inter-
actions, ties, and networking style within a social
network. When managers and employees share
with one another information and meaning
attached to differences in perception, this is likely
to influence the choices and actions that connect
people and create new knowledge. However,
Bohnet and Saidi (2019) argue that differences
in absolute informedness may not be associated
with performance differences. Instead, informa-
tional differences can have an effect on perfor-
mance only when subjects are differently treated,
and the seemingly less well-informed subjects
perform significantly worse.
Organizations do have positive deviant
employees who can contribute to competitiveness
of any entity. This may happen when leadership
creates enabling environment for the employees
to act with autonomy in mind. Positive deviants
need conducive environment for:
Acceptability
Positive Deviance is an innovative approach that
enables organizations to discover their inherent
wisdom. All members of the organization have
the opportunity to contribute to the solution and
broader adoption of the solution. The Positive
Deviance approach strives to accomplish sustain-
able behaviors through interactions and feedback
by identifying new ways of solving problems and
accessing resources from different social and
business networks. Positive deviants are more
capable of promoting behavior change, because
they are not inhibited by differences in experi-
ences or culture (Frese and Gielnik 2014). The
positive deviants face the same challenges and
barriers and share the same norms and values as
the nonpositive deviants. Therefore, nonpositive
deviants can identify themselves with the positive
deviants, because “if they can do it, we can also
do it.”Therefore, positive deviants serve as role
models for nonpositive deviants. This implies that
the solutions of the positive deviant role models
are more solutions proposed by experts, which
results in the second premises of Positive
Deviance.
Competitiveness
Employees with divergent views come up with
unique solutions to the problems through learning
from each other. The solutions of positive devi-
ants are based on the available resources within
the organization, social, or business network.
Positive Deviance 3
Therefore, solutions remain feasible which makes
positive deviant solutions more sustainable. This
results in the third premises of Positive Deviance.
Adoption
Positive Deviance is a peer-based learning process
through individual interactions. In the Positive
Deviance approach, the manager creates a condu-
cive environment for employees to learn from
each other through feedback. The manager facil-
itates all stages of the Positive Deviance approach
(Bhattacharya and Singh 2019; Pascale et al.
2011). The stages of Positive Deviance cover
the identification of the needs in the organization,
the problem, and the positive deviants. Moreover,
the uncommon behaviors and/or practices of the
positive deviants are discovered, which is often
called the Positive Deviance inquiry. Thereafter,
interventions are designed based on the results
(van Dick and Scheffel 2015). In the intervention,
nonpositive deviants should learn the micro-
behaviors from positive deviants, which is related
to peer-based learning, and practice the new ways
of doing things together. One of the principles of
Positive Deviance is that “you are more likely to
act your way into a new way of thinking than to
think your way into a new way of acting”(Pascale
et al. 2010, p. 38). This implies that adopting new
behavior is more feasible through modeling than
through knowledge transfer, which results in the
first premises of Positive Deviance.
Positive Deviance as a Management
Method
Organizational behavior literature shows that
there is a greater likelihood that employees
engage in positive deviant behaviors once they
are psychologically empowered in the working
environment. Cameron and Spreitzer (2011)
state that psychological empowerment is likely
to be a key enabler of positive deviance. They
posit that an empowered mindset is critical for
adoption. Empowerment enables employees to
participate in decision making, helping them to
break out of stagnant mindsets to take a risk and
try something new. Organizational behavior
researchers point out that the pervasive influence
of norms provides a means of control over what
people say and do. Positive deviance requires real
risk, and it requires departing from norms in a
positive way often making others uncomfortable.
In other words, when companies empower their
employees, they are more likely to engage in risk-
taking behaviors that depart positively from the
norms of the organization in a way that is benefi-
cial to the organization. And companies making
their employees empowered have led to much
financial and psychological gain: supervisors
who report higher levels of empowerment are
seen by their subordinates as more innovative,
upward influencing, and inspirational. Despite
organizational acceptance of positive deviance,
as a management method, has not been explicitly
investigated.
There are research and practical gaps in posi-
tive deviance knowledge within the arena of orga-
nizational science. First, the underlying
mechanisms of positive deviance methods which
give rise to claims of endogenous innovation suc-
cess remain a subject of future research. More
especially issues related to willingness to adopt,
ability to adopt, and capacity to reward. This is a
necessary step to realize the potential of positive
deviance as a concept, without which the concept
has limited practical utility and fails to fulfill the
requirements of engaged scholarship.
Second, it is widely recognized that deviance
can have deleterious outcomes as well as positive
outcomes. Hence, management may be reticent to
encourage rule-breaking as a means of innovation,
compounding the importance of providing clearly
elucidated mechanisms by which positive devi-
ance operates as a form of endogenous innova-
tion. Positive deviance has merit as a management
method for innovation. Namely, management
potentially tolerates deviance from both formal
and informal norms as a means of endogenous
innovation. Management is likely to be more
accepting of informal deviance than formal devi-
ance because controls are varied and differ from
individual to individual and group to group
(Vadera et al. 2013).
Positive Deviance can be majorly categorized
into formal and informal. Formal deviance is a
4 Positive Deviance
behavior that violates social norms, practices, or
policies of an organization. Informal deviance
refers to violations of informal social norms,
which are norms that have not been codified into
policies. Management may be reluctant to discuss
informal deviance relative to formal deviance.
This reluctance could not be attributed to negative
evaluation of the deviant behavior, itself, as both
informal and formal deviance are often viewed
positively as well as negatively. Hence, it is
argued that reluctance may be indicative that man-
agement perceives formal breaches as an indicator
of management failure, whereas informal
breaches are not. The ultimate evaluation, then,
depends on the reference group judging the
behavior (management) and their perception of
the behavior rather than the objective behavior
itself.
Challenges of Managing Positive
Deviants in Developing Countries
In developing countries, small-medium organiza-
tions face a challenge of managing employees
with deviant behaviors since they have a greater
tendency to resign, develop stress related prob-
lems, and have low morale. They sometimes
experience low self-esteem, an increase in fear
and lack of confidence at work, as well as physical
and psychological pain. This normally happens
where innovations and resource allocation are
highly controlled by top management.
Employees may not be willing to adopt posi-
tively deviant behavior based on the premise that
the norms and policies in the organization pro-
mote resistance to change to adopt new complex
behaviors.
Organizations may not have results-based
credibility to measure behavior-based view of
positive deviance. These judgments may invoke
cognitive and/or affective resistance to change,
limiting willingness to adopt. The implication is
that good ideas may be disregarded if they are not
perceived as positive and/or the source is not
trusted, making them unable to generate intrinsic
motivation and credibility.
Ability to adopt behavior-based and outcome-
based approaches to positive deviance is a chal-
lenge. Specifically, positive deviance assumes that
positively deviant behaviors can be implemented
by all organizational members owing to common-
ality in goals, resources, and constraints which
may not be the case.
Recommendations
Organization leaders should create enabling envi-
ronment for error and trail. Employees should be
given freedom to make experiments guided by
policies. In case an error is made by positive
deviant employee, management should focus on
the process of learning from the mistakes and how
to improve on the new generated ideas without
punishing the employee since it kills initiatives.
The organization systems should accommodate
information sharing and error management.
Managers can stimulate the emergence of pos-
itive deviance by deviating themselves and
encouraging employees to learn from errors by
rewarding and scaling good practices. Individuals
that positively deviate stimulate positive deviance
in their teams.
Managers that consistently reward, reprimand,
and that keep a tight control over processes, yet at
the same time invite employees to actively partic-
ipate in design making and optimizing work
design, are likely to stimulate the highest degree
of positive deviance.
Nurturing positive deviants require an enabled,
adequate, and favorable internal working environ-
ment with a certain degree of freedom and
exercised tolerance of trials and error. In this
case, organization managers ought to provide a
flexible platform for enhanced rational thinking
and learning. Positive deviance is used to develop
interventions and implementation process based
on the successful behaviors and strategies of indi-
viduals at risk. Despite their circumstances, they
perform better than their peers did.
Positive Deviance 5
Conclusion
Acceptance is highest and broadest when manage-
ment embrace deviance from both formal and
informal norms. However, formal deviance is
monitored more closely than informal deviance
and, if considered undesirable, will be discour-
aged using relational governance. Organizations
that manage Positive Deviance well are likely to
remain competitive because of their continued
innovations.
Cross-References
▶Business and Management
▶Education
▶Leadership
▶Psychology
▶Public Administration
▶Public health
▶Sociology
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