The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (52 page)

Read The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business Online

Authors: Charles Duhigg

Tags: #Psychology, #Organizational Behavior, #General, #Self-Help, #Social Psychology, #Personal Growth, #Business & Economics

The Rhode Island Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline, in a consent order, wrote that the physician “failed to make an accurate assessment of the location of the hematoma prior to performing the surgical evacuation.” The State Department of Health found that “an initial review of this incident reveals hospital surgical safeguards are deficient and that some systems were not followed.”

Representatives of both the Board and Department of Health declined to comment further.

6.10
the surgeon yelled
In a statement, a representative of Rhode Island Hospital wrote “I believe [the surgeon] was the one who noticed that there was no bleeding—there are various versions as to what he said at that time. He asked for the films to be pulled up, confirmed the error and they proceeded to close and perform the procedure on the correct side. Except for [the surgeon’s] comments, the staff said the room was very quiet once they realized the error.”

6.11
ever working at Rhode Island Hospital again
In the physician’s letter responding to fact-checking inquiries, he wrote that “no one has claimed that this mistake cost [the patient] his life. The family never claimed wrongful death, and they personally expressed their gratitude to me for saving his life on that day. The hospital and the nurse practitioner combined paid more towards a $140,000 settlement than I did.” Rhode Island Hospital, when asked about this account, declined to comment.

6.12
The book’s bland cover and daunting
R. R. Nelson and S. G. Winter,
An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982).

6.13
candidates didn’t pretend to understand
R. R. Nelson and S. G. Winter, “The Schumpeterian Tradeoff Revisited,”
The American Economic Review
72 (1982): 114–32. Winter, in a note in response to fact-checking questions, wrote: “The ‘Schumpeterian tradeoff’ (subject of a 1982 AER paper and a kindred chapter, 14, in our book) was only a facet of the project, and not a motivating one. Nelson and I were discussing a collection of issues around technological change, economic growth and firm behavior long before 1982, long before we were together at Yale, and particularly at RAND in 1966–68. Nelson went to Yale in 1968; I went to Michigan that year and joined the Yale faculty in 1976. We were ‘on the trail’ of the 1982 book from 1967, and started publishing related work in 1973.… In short, while the ‘Schumpeter’ influence is obviously strong in the heritage, the specific ‘Schumpeterian tradeoff’ aspect is not.”

6.14
Within the world of business strategy
For an overview of subsequent research, see M. C. Becker, “Organizational Routines: A Review of the Literature,”
Industrial and Corporate Change
13 (2004): 643–78; Marta S. Feldman, “Organizational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change,”
Organization Science
11 (2000): 611–29.

6.15
before arriving at their central conclusion
Winter, in a note in response to fact-checking questions, wrote: “There was very little empirical work of my own, and even less that got published—most of that being Nelson on aspects of technological change. In the domain of firm behavior, we mostly stood on the shoulders of the giants of the Carnegie School (Simon, Cyert, and March), and relied on a wide range of other sources—technology studies, business histories,
development economics, some psychologists … and Michael Polanyi, however you classify him.”

6.16
thousands of employees’ independent decisions
Winter, in a note in response to fact-checking questions, clarified that such patterns that emerge from thousands of employees’ independent decisions are an aspect of routines, but routines also “get shaped from a lot of directions, one of which is deliberate managerial design. We emphasized, however, that when that happens, the actual routine that emerges, as opposed to the nominal one that was deliberately designed, is influenced, again, by a lot of choices at the individual level, as well as other considerations (see book [
Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change
] p. 108).”

6.17
These organizational habits—or “routines”
For more on the fascinating topic of how organizational routines emerge and work, see Paul S. Adler, Barbara Goldoftas, and David I. Levine, “Flexibility Versus Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Production System,”
Organization Science
10 (1999): 43–67; B. E. Ashforth and Y. Fried, “The Mindlessness of Organisational Behaviors,”
Human Relations
41 (1988): 305–29; Donde P. Ashmos, Dennis Duchon, and Reuben R. McDaniel, “Participation in Strategic Decision Making: The Role of Organisational Predisposition and Issue Interpretation,”
Decision Sciences
29 (1998): 25–51; M. C. Becker, “The Influence of Positive and Negative Normative Feedback on the Development and Persistence of Group Routines,” doctoral thesis, Purdue University, 2001; M. C. Becker and N. Lazaric, “The Role of Routines in Organizations: An Empirical and Taxonomic Investigation,” doctoral thesis, Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge, 2004; Bessant, Caffyn, and Gallagher, “The Influence of Knowledge in the Replication of Routines,”
Economie Appliquée
LVI, 65–94; “An Evolutionary Model of Continuous Improvement Behaviour,”
Technovation
21 (2001): 67–77; Tilmann Betsch, Klaus Fiedler, and Julia Brinkmann, “Behavioral Routines in Decision Making: The Effects of Novelty in Task Presentation and Time Pressure on Routine Maintenance and Deviation,”
European Journal of Psychology
28 (1998): 861–78; Tilmann Betsch et al., “When Prior Knowledge Overrules New Evidence: Adaptive Use of Decision Strategies and Role Behavioral Routines,”
Swiss Journal of
Psychology
58 (1999): 151–60; Tilmann Betsch et al., “The Effects of Routine Strength on Adaptation and Information Search in Recurrent Decision Making,”
Organisational
Behaviour and Human Decision Processes
84 (2001): 23–53; J. Burns, “The Dynamics of Accounting Change: Interplay Between New Practices, Routines, Institutions, Power, and Politics,”
Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal
13 (2000): 566–86; M. D. Cohen, “Individual Learning and Organisational Routine: Emerging Connections,”
Organisation Science
2 (1991): 135–39; M. Cohen and P. Bacdayan, “Organisational Routines Are Stored as Procedural
Memory: Evidence from a Laboratory Study,”
Organisation Science
5 (1994): 554–68; M. D. Cohen et al., “Routines and Other Recurring Action Patterns of Organisations: Contemporary Research Issues,”
Industrial and Corporate Change
5 (1996): 653–98; B. Coriat, “Variety, Routines, and Networks: The Metamorphosis of Fordist Firms,”
Industrial
and Corporate Change
4 (1995): 205–27; B. Coriat and G. Dosi, “Learning How to Govern and Learning How to Solve Problems: On the Co-evolution of Competences, Conflicts, and Organisational Routines,” in
The Role of Technology, Strategy, Organisation, and Regions
, ed. A. D. J. Chandler, P. Hadstroem, and O. Soelvell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); L. D’adderio, “Configuring Software, Reconfiguring Memories: The Influence of Integrated Systems on the Reproduction of Knowledge and Routines,”
Industrial and Corporate Change
12 (2003): 321–50; P. A. David,
Path Dependence and the Quest for Historical Economics: One More Chorus of the Ballad of QWERTY
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); G. Delmestri, “Do All Roads Lead to Rome … or Berlin? The Evolution of Intra-and Inter-organisational Routines in the Machine-Building Industry,”
Organisation Studies
19 (1998): 639–65; Giovanni Dosi, Richard R. Nelson, and Sidney Winter, “Introduction: The Nature and Dynamics of Organisational Capabilities,”
The Nature and
Dynamics of Organisational Capabilities
, ed. G. Dosi, R. R. Nelson, and S. G. Winter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1–22; G. Dowell and A. Swaminathan, “Racing and Back-pedalling into the Future: New Product Introduction and Organisational Mortality in the US Bicycle Industry, 1880–1918,”
Organisation
Studies
21 (2000): 405–31; A. C. Edmondson, R. M. Bohmer, and G. P. Pisano, “Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals,”
Administrative Science Quarterly
46 (2001): 685–716; M. Egidi, “Routines, Hierarchies of Problems, Procedural Behaviour: Some Evidence from Experiments,” in
The Rational
Foundations of Economic Behaviour
, ed. K. Arrow et al. (London: Macmillan, 1996), 303–33; M. S. Feldman, “Organisational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change,”
Organisation
Science
11 (2000): 611–29; Marta S. Feldman, “A Performative Perspective on Stability and Change in Organizational Routines,”
Industrial and Corporate Change
12 (2003): 727–52; Marta S. Feldman and B. T. Pentland, “Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change,”
Administrative Science Quarterly
48 (2003): 94–118; Marta S. Feldman and A. Rafaeli, “Organisational Routines as Sources of Connections and Understandings,”
Journal of Management Studies
39 (2002): 309–31; A. Garapin and A. Hollard, “Routines and Incentives in Group Tasks,”
Journal of
Evolutionary Economics
9 (1999): 465–86; C. J. Gersick and J. R. Hackman, “Habitual Routines in Task-Performing Groups,”
Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes
47 (1990): 65–97; R. Grant, “Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm,”
Strategic Management Journal
17
(1996): 109–22; R. Heiner, “The Origin of Predictable Behaviour,”
American Economic Review
73 (1983): 560–95; G. M. Hodgson, “The Ubiquity of Habits and Rules,”
Cambridge Journal of Economics
21 (1997): 663–84; G. M. Hodgson, “The Mystery of the Routine: The Darwinian Destiny of
An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change,

Revue Économique
54 (2003): 355–84; G. M. Hodgson and T. Knudsen, “The Firm as an Interactor: Firms as Vehicles for Habits and Routines,”
Journal of Evolutionary Economics
14, no. 3 (2004): 281–307; A. Inam, “Institutions, Routines, and Crises: Post-earthquake Housing Recovery in Mexico City and Los Angeles,” doctoral thesis, University of Southern California, 1997; A. Inam, “Institutions, Routines, and Crises—Post-earthquake Housing Recovery in Mexico City and Los Angeles,”
Cities
16 (1999): 391–407; O. Jones and M. Craven, “Beyond the Routine: Innovation Management and the Teaching Company Scheme,”
Technovation
21 (2001): 267–79; M. Kilduff, “Performance and Interaction Routines in Multinational Corporations,”
Journal
of International Business Studies
23 (1992): 133–45; N. Lazaric, “The Role of Routines, Rules, and Habits in Collective Learning: Some Epistemological and Ontological Considerations,”
European Journal of Economic and Social
Systems
14 (2000): 157–71; N. Lazaric and B. Denis, “How and Why Routines Change: Some Lessons from the Articulation of Knowledge with ISO 9002 Implementation in the Food Industry,”
Economies et
Sociétés
6 (2001): 585–612; B. Levitt and J. March, “Organisational Learning,”
Annual Review of Sociology
14 (1988): 319–40; P. Lillrank, “The Quality of Standard, Routine, and Nonroutine Processes,”
Organization
Studies
24 (2003): 215–33; S. Massini et al., “The Evolution of Organizational Routines Among Large Western and Japanese Firms,”
Research Policy
31 (2002): 1333–48; T. J. McKeown, “Plans and Routines, Bureaucratic Bargaining, and the Cuban Missile Crisis,”
Journal of Politics
63 (2001): 1163–90; A. P. Minkler, “The Problem with Dispersed Knowledge: Firms in Theory and Practice,”
Kyklos
46 (1993): 569–87; P. Morosini, S. Shane, and H. Singh, “National Cultural Distance and Cross-Border Acquisition Performance,”
Journal of International Business Studies
29 (1998): 137–58; A. Narduzzo, E. Rocco, and M. Warglien, “Talking About Routines in the Field,” in
The Nature and Dynamics of Organizational Capabilities
, ed. G. Dosi, R. Nelson, and S. Winter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 27–50; R. R. Nelson, “Routines,” in
The Elgar
Companion to Institutional and Evolutionary Economics,
vol. 2, ed. G. Hodgson, W. Samuels, and M. Tool (Aldershot, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1992), 249–53; B. T. Pentland, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Variety in the Execution of Organizational Work Processes,”
Management Science
49 (2003): 857–70; B. T. Pentland and H. Rueter, “Organisational Routines as Grammars of Action,”
Administrative Sciences Quarterly
39 (1994): 484–510; L. Perren and P. Grant, “The Evolution of Management Accounting Routines in Small Businesses: A Social Construction
Perspective,”
Management Accounting Research
11 (2000): 391–411; D. J. Phillips, “A Genealogical Approach to Organizational Life Chances: The Parent–Progeny Transfer Among Silicon Valley Law Firms, 1946–1996,”
Administrative Science Quarterly
47 (2002): 474–506; S. Postrel and R. Rumelt, “Incentives, Routines, and Self-Command,”
Industrial and
Corporate Change
1 (1992): 397–425; P. D. Sherer, N. Rogovksy, and N. Wright, “What Drives Employment Relations in Taxicab Organisations?”
Organisation Science
9 (1998): 34–48; H. A. Simon, “Programs as Factors of Production,”
Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual
Winter Meeting, 1966,
Industrial Relations Research Association, 1967, 178–88; L. A. Suchman, “Office Procedure as Practical Action: Models of Work and System Design,”
ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems
1 (1983): 320–28; G. Szulanski, “Appropriability and the Challenge of Scope: Banc One Routinizes Replication,” in
Nature and Dynamics of
Organisational Capabilities
, ed. G. Dosi, R. R. Nelson, and S. G. Winter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 69–97; D. Tranfield and S. Smith, “The Strategic Regeneration of Manufacturing by Changing Routines,”
International Journal of Operations and Production Management
18 (1998): 114–29; Karl E. Weick, “The Vulnerable System: An Analysis of the Tenerife Air Disaster,”
Journal of
Management
16 (1990): 571–93; Karl E. Weick, “The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann–Gulch Disaster,”
Administrative Science Quarterly
38 (1993): 628–52; H. M. Weiss and D. R. Ilgen, “Routinized Behaviour in Organisations,”
Journal of Behavioral
Economics
14 (1985): 57–67; S. G. Winter, “Economic ‘Natural Selection’ and the Theory of the Firm,”
Yale Economic
Essays
4 (1964): 225–72; S. G. Winter, “Optimization and Evolution in the Theory of the Firm,” in
Adaptive Economic Models
, ed. R. Day and T. Groves (New York: Academic Press, 1975), 73–118; S. G. Winter and G. Szulanski, “Replication as Strategy,”
Organization Science
12 (2001): 730–43; S. G. Winter and G. Szulanski, “Replication of Organisational Routines: Conceptualizing the Exploitation of Knowledge Assets,” in
The Strategic
Management of Intellectual Capital and Organisational Knowledge: A Collection of Readings
, ed. N. Bontis and C. W. Choo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 207–21; M. Zollo, J. Reuer, and H. Singh, “Interorganizational Routines and Performance in Strategic Alliances,”
Organization Science
13 (2002): 701–13.

Other books

The August 5 by Jenna Helland
First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen
What Dreams May Come by Kay Hooper
Saved By The Doctor (BWWM Romance) by Tasha Jones, BWWM Crew
Starfist: Blood Contact by David Sherman; Dan Cragg
In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
The Gold in the Grave by Terry Deary