Developing the positive organization from a secure base

Abstract

This chapter offers a distinction between traditional bureaucracy and an emerging organizational form, which we call positive organization, a byproduct of intervention techniques such as appreciative inquiry. We suggest that the root of the distinction lies in positive organization's greater reliance on a heretofore underexploited institutional pillar (Scott, 2001), which we label the relational–emotional. The relational–emotional pillar, unlike its regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive counterparts, owes its potency to attachment phenomena (Bowlby, 1969). We expand on the distinction by viewing the positive organization as one of three aspects of Ouchi's clan form, the other two being normative bureaucracy and cognitive bureaucracy. We conclude with a contingency theory of transaction cost reduction. Regulative (traditional) bureaucracy is most effective in reducing transaction costs when environmental uncertainty and vulnerability to opportunism are both moderate, normative bureaucracy when environmental uncertainty is moderate but vulnerability to opportunism is high, cognitive bureaucracy when environmental uncertainty is high but vulnerability to opportunism is moderate, and positive organization when both environmental uncertainty and vulnerability to opportunism are high.