Recognising your self-theories can lead to more adaptable and astute managerial decision-making. by Robert E. Wood *
RESEARCH
Recognising your self-theories can lead to more adaptable and astute managerial decision-making. by Robert E. Wood *
Implicit theories of managers:
do your assumptions help or hinder you?
Every managerial action is based on assumptions about human nature and the world in which we operate. Assumptions shape what we see and how we react to situations. Most of these assumptions are implicit in the sense that managers are not consciously aware of the impact that they have on their actions and, in some cases, are not even aware that they ever make certain assumptions. Management research refers to these assumptions as theories, in the sense that they help managers to maintain a coherent view of people and the world, and their effects are repeatedly evident in similar types of situations.
WHAT ARE THE IMPLICIT THEORIES OF MANAGERS?
Douglas McGregor from MIT provided one answer to this question in his statement of Theory X and Theory Y. 1 Readers may recall that Theory X was a set of negative assumptions that managers made about workers, including that:“ the average human being has an inherent dislike of work, prefers to be directed, has little ambition, wishes to avoid responsibility and values security above all else”. Theory Y assumptions included the beliefs:“ that human beings enjoyed and actively sought work, self-direction, responsibility and the opportunity to utilise their imagination”.
In recent years, I have been conducting work 2 on the implicit theories that managers have about themselves and other people and how these theories influence judgments, decision-making and behaviour. This work has built on and extended the research of Carol Dweck of Columbia University, 3 who first identified the same set of implicit theories in young children and teenagers, and has shown how the assumptions in each theory impact on academic performance and children’ s success in social settings. In my collaborative research and Dweck’ s, we have identified two important implicit theories. These theories are simpler than those postulated by McGregor and our studies have shown that they exert a predictable impact on managers’ behaviour, which has never been established for Theory X and Theory Y. The first we call entity theory, which refers to when a person assumes or believes that human characteristics are fixed entities that do not change much, if at all, with experience. The second we call incremental theory, which refers to a view that human characteristics are malleable, that they change with experience and can be developed. In the sections that follow, I will outline the scope of these two implicit theories and describe the results of some research that demonstrates their implications for managerial action.
First, let’ s consider an example of how people view mental ability to illustrate the differences that can arise between individuals who have an entity theory of mental ability and those who have an incremental theory.
People with an entity theory of mental ability take the view that intelligence is a deeply inherent and fixed personal trait. For entity theorists, there are smart people and dumb people and not much movement between the two categories. However, if mental ability is fixed then a person who has that basic aptitude should be able to demonstrate it at will, in any situation. For entity theorists, a person’ s failure at a task requiring mental ability is, therefore, construed as evidence of a lack of ability. Tasks that are novel, involve evaluations by others or require experimentation, all pose a threat to the entity theorist because they carry a higher risk
PHOTOLIBRARY. COM: JASON BECK
12 | AGSM ISSUE 1 • 2001