Insights from a Qualitative Analysis of a Conductorless Orchestra
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The Complexity of Trust-Control Relationships in Creative Organizations: Insights From a Qualitative Analysis of a Conductorless Orchestra Dmitry M. Khodyakov, Rutgers University Using a qualitative approach, I study two processes of intra- organizational cooperation and coordination – control and trust – in creative organizations. Specifi cally, I analyze the complex nature of Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/86/1/1/2234911 by guest on 27 September 2021 trust-control relationships in Orpheus orchestra, the world’s largest contemporary conductorless orchestra. I discuss how it rehearses and performs without a baton holder and benefi ts from the creativity of all musicians. This study supports the duality perspective of trust- control relationships. While competence trust and goodwill trust enable musicians to participate in organizational decision-making and be creative, it is behavioral, input, output and social control strategies that facilitate the development of trust and help ensure the orchestra’s long- term success. Trust-control duality allows Orpheus to achieve “optimal distinctiveness,” which aligns creativity and artistic freedoms with the goals of economic stability. Introduction Creativity in organizations emerges from the collaboration of many people who share their unique skills and talents to reach a desired goal (Henry 2004). Creative collaboration, however, raises multiple coordination problems and increases the potential for intra-organizational conflict. Although difference in perspectives may increase the quality of the final product in creative organizations, it can also make the decision-making process less efficient. Research on creativity shows that successful collaboration is based on trust and willingness to cooperate (Sawyer 2001; Henry 2004; Moran and John-Steiner 2004). Trustworthy relationships, however, make people vulnerable to the behavior of their colleagues, who are expected, but not obliged, to act in the best interest of the organization. Therefore, creative organizations are faced with a dilemma in which they must allow their employees’ creative freedom but also have to control their actions. Trust-control relationships in organizations have recently become a hot topic of theoretical debates.1 Some scholars claim that trust and control are substitutes because the presence of one governance strategy reduces the need for another (Bradach and Eccles 1989; Sitkin and Roth 1993). Research demonstrates that The author wishes to thank Lee Clarke, Paul McLean, Deborah Carr, Pat Roos, Barbara Misztal and three anonymous Social Forces reviewers for their detailed comments and helpful suggestions. Appreciation is also extended to all Orpheus musicians who participated in the study and to Ryan McCarthy, former Education and Outreach Coordinator of the orchestra, whose help was invaluable. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the World Congress of Sociology in Durban (RC 10). Direct correspondence to Dmitry M. Khodyakov, Rutgers University, Department of Sociology, 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8045. E-mail: [email protected]. © The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, Volume 86, Number 1, September 2007 2 • Social Forces Volume 86, Number 1 • September 2007 organizations can save on expansive control mechanisms as trust can lower transaction costs and facilitate exchange by reducing the need for contract enforcement (Nooteboom 2000). At the same time, some organizations adopt legalistic remedies to solve the problems of reduced trust or increased distrust (Sitkin and Roth 1993). Others suggest that control and trust complement each other by allowing organizations to achieve “greater exchange performance than either governance choice [can provide] in isolation.” (Poppo and Zenger 2002) Formal binding Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/86/1/1/2234911 by guest on 27 September 2021 contracts and impersonal power in organizations allow for trust because they create an institutional environment that facilitates the development of trustworthy relationships (Sitkin 1995; Malhotra and Murnighan 2002). Similarly, trust can help sustain business relationships when contracts fail to specify all contingencies (Poppo and Zenger 2002). Nonetheless, according to Das and Teng (2001), these approaches oversimplify the complexity of trust-control relationships that vary depending on the type of trust and control involved. While formal control may undermine trust (because rules reduce employee autonomy to make decisions), social control, achieved through socialization into organizational culture, may encourage the development of trustworthy relationships. Therefore, trust and control are “two separate routes to risk reduction… [which] can and should be combined in specific ways for best risk management results” (Das and Teng 2001) because simultaneous reliance on trust and control contributes to the effectiveness of both governance strategies (Long and Sitkin 2006). As such, trust and control can be both substitutes and complements (Klein Woolthuis, Hillebrand and Nooteboom 2005). According to Möllering (2005), however, treating trust and control as separate routes to risk reduction implies only “a potential relationship between trust and control.” In contrast, he proposes to treat trust and control as a duality, which means that trust and control always assume each other’s existence, refer to and create each other, but are irreducible to one another. The duality approach suggests that trust and control cannot be analyzed in isolation because they are always co-present. This article qualitatively analyzes trust-control relationships in a creative organization. I chose to study the Orpheus orchestra, the world’s largest conductorless chamber orchestra, because it does not have a baton holder, employs both trust and control and relies on the artistic input of its musicians. Orpheus is a creative organization because of its novel, self-invented and successful method of music making that allows it to be different from other orchestras and benefit from such uniqueness (Hall, Zhu and Yan 2002). While Orpheus is a unique orchestra, it represents the type of creative organizations that are relatively small, willing to change and innovate, promote open communication and encourage employee participation (Cummings 1965). They include, for example, R&D units of large corporations, improvisational theaters and fashion industry firms. The goal of this project is twofold: to explain how Orpheus performs without a conductor by relying on trust and control and to evaluate the applicability of existing theories of trust-control relationships to a creative organization. The Trust and Control in Creative Organizations • 3 results of this study suggest that reliance on trust and control allows Orpheus to achieve “optimal distinctiveness,” which can be understood as an intersection of artistic uniqueness and organizational competitiveness (Alvarez et al. 2005). I found strong support for the duality theory of trust-control relationships because trust and control in Orpheus are intricately intertwined. The analysis of Orpheus offers three contributions to the literature on trust- control relationships. First, it focuses on trust-control relationships within organizations that value creativity and uniqueness more than efficiency and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/86/1/1/2234911 by guest on 27 September 2021 productivity. Usually scholars analyze trust-control relationships either between organizations, such as strategic alliances (Das and Teng 2001), international joint ventures (Fryxell, Dooley and Vryza 2002) and marketing partnerships (Aulakh, Kotabe and Sahay 1996), or within organizations that value efficiency and profitability, such as factories (Rus and Iglic 2005). Second, while most empirical studies of trust and control are based on a quantitative research methodology (Fryxell, Dooley and Vryza 2002; Rus and Iglic 2005)2, this project uses a qualitative approach, which is particularly suitable for providing rich, in-depth understandings of trust-control relationships within organizations. Third, by employing Das and Teng’s (2001) typology of trust and control, this study empirically demonstrates merits of the duality perspective of trust-control relationships. Control and Trust in Organizations Control and trust are often viewed as distinct yet related mechanisms of coordination and cooperation within and between organizations (Das and Teng 1998). Control is typically understood as “a regulatory process by which elements of a system are made more predictable through the establishment of standards in pursuit of some desired objective or state.” (Rus and Iglic 2005) Although organizations create rules to reduce the chance of opportunism and disobedience, they also establish norms and values that encourage desirable outcomes (Fryxell, Dooley and Vryza 2002; Long and Sitkin 2006). The former type of control is known as formal control, while the latter is called informal or social control. Formal control is further subdivided into behavior, input and output control. Behavior control, also known as structural or bureaucratic control, is usually based on the use of rules and procedures to monitor employee behavior (Eisenhardt 1985). Input control refers to the manipulation of resources intended to influence organizational performance (Cardinal 2001). Output control describes the regulation of results of activities in an attempt