Talk, decision, and action can each satisfy different audiences, so an organisation may function precisely because they do not connect.
Brunsson's 1989 term, sometimes translated as organisational hypocrisy. His argument is that the decoupling is functional: it lets an organisation satisfy incompatible demands rather than choose between them.
In practice
- A firm publishes a sustainability strategy, takes a decision that contradicts it, and operates on a third basis, and each audience is satisfied.
- A university's stated admissions criteria, its published process and its actual selection are three different things that coexist without anyone lying.
- Standing
- The mechanism behind POSIWID and behind ceremonial compliance.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Why organisations learn, harden and decline