The Effects of Top Managers’ Organizational Reliability Orientation

The implicit theories that top managers hold about organizational reliability potentially exert strong effects on how frontline employees approach the task of managing reliability and, hence, on reliability-linked outcomes. Specifically, such implicit theories (“orientation” for short) can be thought of as varying along a continuum ranging from modular at one end to systemic at the other. A more modular orientation leads to a stronger organizational emphasis on strict compliance, whereas a more systemic orientation emphasizes local initiative by enabling employees to go “above and beyond” formal rules when appropriate. I describe the two ends of the continuum and their implications for organizational reliability. I then point out recent trends that warrant a shift toward a systemic orientation across industries and discuss some initial implications for research and practice.