Corrective culture: developing a conceptual model to explain preventable institutional failures

Hald, E. Julie (2023) Corrective culture: developing a conceptual model to explain preventable institutional failures. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis develops and tests a cultural model for explaining why people fail to avoid preventable institutional failures. It proposes ‘corrective culture’ to capture the systemic ‘problems in dealing with problems’ that contribute to these events. Entirely language-based, it applies methods of qualitative and quantitative text analysis to examine corrective culture in datasets ranging from the macro-level of post hoc case studies and investigation reports, down to the micro-level of people’s attempts to identify problems both before and after failure. It presents four articles: a systematic review of case studies which operationalise cultural concepts to explain institutional failures (n = 74), a mixed methods analysis of public inquiry reports (n = 54), a dictionary analysis of witness statements to a public inquiry (n = 93), and a qualitative content analysis of corporate emails sent ‘up’ at the failing Enron Corporation (n = 11,004). The systematic review establishes the role of corrective culture in preventable failures (e.g., ignoring warnings, misinterpreting problems) as conceptually distinct from the causes of these events. The first empirical study contributes a dynamic model to explain the process by which problems in organisations can go unidentified, misinterpreted, or unresolved through contemporaneous and consecutive loops flowing through an organisation. The second empirical study shows that malfunctions in corrective culture may persist despite a detrimental outcome due to lack of insight or acceptance for their role in a failure. Finally, the third empirical study demonstrates that individuals commonly speak-up before failure to identify concerns, but are frequently misinformed and rarely responded to, leading to a behavioural conceptualisation of voice which challenges the dichotomous perspective that people either raise concerns or stay silent. Together, this thesis demonstrates that, while organisational problems and the consequences of failure inevitably differ, preventable failures involve a common processual dynamic of ‘problems in dealing with problems’ which is often the same.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2023 E. Julie Hald
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Sets:	Departments > Psychological and Behavioural Science
Supervisor:	Reader, Tom W. and Gillespie, Alex
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4587

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