This Slideshare presentation is a partial preview of the full business document. To view and download the full document, please go here: http://flevy.com/browse/business-document/employee-management-1253 BENEFITS OF DOCUMENT 1. Publication quality research 2. Cutting edge topic 3. Healthcare focus DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION The paper provides a research report on employee management in context of health care industry. The effects of standardization of processes on organizational performance and individual performance have been studied extensively. Scholars found that standardization of processes has positive impact on performance and increases efficiency. Standardization has also been studied as a mechanism for embedding individual learning into organizational learning through standardized routines or problem-solving processes

1. Positive Deviance from Standardization at Professional Level: An Investigation
Motivation and Literature
The effects of standardization of processes on organizational performance (Taylor, 1911; Adler, 1993a;
1993b; Adler & Borys, 1996; Benner & Tushman, 2003) and individual performance (Cohen &
Bacdayan, 1994; Cohen, 2006, 2007) have been studied extensively. Taylor, (1911) and Deming (1986)
found that standardization of processes has positive impact on performance and increases efficiency.
Standardization has also been studied as a mechanism for embedding individual learning into
organizational learning through standardized routines (Nelson & Winter, 1982) or problem-solving
processes (March & Simon, 1993; March 1991). From an operations perspective, quality management
techniques such as Total Quality Management (TQM) (Deming, 1986; Crosby, 1979; Juran, 1986;
Powell, 1995), Lean management (Shah & Ward, 2003, 2007; White et al, 1999), Six Sigma (Linderman
et al, 2003; Schroeder et al, 2008; Hahn et al, 2000), all involve standardization of business processes
and have been adopted by prominent corporations around the world, even in healthcare (Balck & Revere,
2006; Motwani et al, 1996). Although standardization brings positive outcomes, it faces resistance from
employees of the organization (Pentland & Feldman, 2005), as it challenges and changes their ways of
everyday work (Becker et al, 2005). Consequently, individuals deviate from standard process using their
own cognitive abilities and this deviant behavior can be negative or positive, when observed from the
outcomes’ perspective (Lawrence & Robinson, 2007).
Counter to common belief, the deviance is not necessarily positive (Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2004) or
negative within itself, rather depends on the context and environmental contingencies (Kaplan et al,
2004). In the book, “Power of Positive Deviance”, Marsh et al (2004, p3) defined positive deviance as a
phenomenon when an individual, working with same resources as peers; provide a better outcome
against the established norm. Spreitzer & Sonenshein (2003, p3) stated, “The positive deviance:
intentional behaviors that depart from the norms of a referent group in honorable ways”. Employee
deviance has been studied extensively in applied psychology literature. It has been defined as positive
or negative deviance (Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2003); or constructive or destructive deviance in
organizations (Warren, 2003). Empirically, there a few studies exploring possible antecedents to
employee deviance (Bolin & Heatherly, 2001; Harris & Ogbonna, 2002) in multi-national organizations
(manufacturing), but not in knowledge-intensive setting (Robinson & Bennett, 1995; Lau et al, 2003).
Moreover, the unit of analysis in these studies has been individual only, while professional level is quite
crucial in healthcare (Fagermoen, 1997; Pratt et al, 2006). In the context of healthcare, this positive
deviant behavior is keenly observable (Banja, 2010), but has not been investigated at profession as unit
of level of analysis. In my research, I am studying “what” are the antecedents to the positive deviance
from standardization at professional level and “how” it affects the performance of employees from same
profession.
Research Setting
Intermount Health Care (IHC), provides an apt and apposite setting to investigate the positive deviance
from standardization. In 2002, IHC began organization-wide Clinical Integration by standardizing the

2. References:
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Adler, P.S. (1999). Building better bureaucracies. Academy of Management Executive 13 (4), 36–47.
Banja, J. (2010). The normalization of deviance in healthcare delivery. Business Horizons, 53(2), 139-148.
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