Overview
Table 2 provides the correlation between the constructs and the dependent variable defensive decision making. It indicates that the main explanatory variables, team’s approach to failure and employee voice, are negatively correlated with defensive decision making (p < 0.001).
Table 2 Correlation between constructs
Defensive decision making
How widespread is defensive decision making? Figure 2 plots for each hierarchy level from level 1 (top level) to level 6 (lowest level with personnel responsibility) and 7 (missing information about hierarchy level). At each hierarchy, level defensive decisions are widespread. On average, 2.5 (SD = 2.1) out of 10 decisions are defensive. Overall, 80% of managers indicated that they made at least one defensive decision and 17% state that at least half of all their decisions were defensive.
How do a team’s approach to failure and employee voice relate to the number of defensive decisions? Table 2 shows the OLS regression with defensive decision making (DDM) as the dependent variable; model 1 and 2 list the controls and model 3 adds approach to failure and employee voice. Consistent with hypothesis 1, a more constructive approach to failure is associated with a lower number of defensive decisions. In line with hypothesis 2, higher levels of employee voice are negatively associated with the number of defensive decisions.
A number of other variables are associated with the number of defensive decisions people take. The more participants are satisfied with their job, the fewer defensive decisions they make. Whereas older managers tend to make more defensive decisions, defensive decisions decline with increasing years of experience in a given area. As we will return to later, note that defensive decisions do not vary according to whether or not participants work is directly influenced by politics.
We also estimated a model that includes employee voice as a moderator. However, the model fits the data worse than do the models presented in Table 3.
Table 3 OLS regression with defensive decision making (DDM) as dependent variable Qualitative analysis
Figure 3 provides an overview of the examples participants gave for a defensive decision, why they thought that defensive decisions occur (causes), and possible countermeasures. The Figure shows that the relative frequency with which a category features in these responses differs strongly among examples, causes, and countermeasures. For instance, the avoidance of conflicts is the single most frequently mentioned motive in the examples, comprising 35% of them. However, when we asked participants directly what they think causes defensive decisions, conflict avoidance was only mentioned in 23% of the causes and features in only 12% of the countermeasures. Similarly, 11% of all participants indicated, mainly with reference to colleagues but not with regard to themselves, that people are afraid and therefore make defensive decisions. However, 0% of the examples relate to someone being overly afraid. The examples reported by participants relate to direct experiences that they had with defensive decisions. Causes and countermeasures are more abstract and have to be inferred. It suggests that examples possibly provide a more accurate picture of the occurrence of defensive decisions.
The main categories are as follows. Of the examples, 35% relate to ‘avoiding conflict’ and concern the relationship to peers or to subordinates. A prototypical statement is the following:
I had to decide whether to hold onto a certain senior manager in my team until the end of his term or whether to find a position for him in another team. I was pretty confident that keeping him here would have severe negative consequences for other team members and for the services that we provide. In the end, I decided defensively and kept him because I was shying away from the conflict. As a result, parts of the services that we provide have stalled for the last 16 months and parts of the team are dissolving as team members are seeking employment elsewhere and new opportunities cannot be realized.
‘Not resisting pressure from superiors’ refers to the relationship to superiors as a source of defensive decisions. It features in 19% of the examples. A prototypical statement is the following:
When recruiting a new employee we had to decide between an internal applicant and an external applicant who was better qualified. There was some uncertainty how well they would perform but I was pretty confident that the external candidate would do a better job. However, due to pressure from superiors I offered the position to the internal candidate.
An example for ‘lack of motivation’ (4%) is the following:
We continued to rely on an external IT support even though the service was very bad. We did hope that they might improve but in the end we stayed with them. We should have made the effort to look for an alternative external IT support.
An example for a defensive decision due to ‘lack of resources’ (13%), which often relates to insufficient number of staff, is the following:
There are often long waiting times for an appointment with the public health office, but you can never be quite sure about it. I therefore do not send my employees even though it would be in the best interest of the team.
Lack of staff not only slows down processes but it can also lead to a ‘lack of information’ (3%) and in turn to defensive decision-making, as the following illustrates:
Due to staff shortages, there is insufficient time to thoroughly examine the facts so that there are uncertainties about the consequences of this decision. Therefore, decisions are delayed or taken defensively.
When naming examples, participants pointed mainly to psychological elements, which characterize 64% of the examples: avoiding conflict, not resisting pressure from superiors, and lack of motivation. Lack of resources or information, in contrast, accounts for only 20% of the examples. Most managers, unlike most physicians, do not consider legal consequences as an important driver for defensive decisions. This emphasis on psychological causes for defensive decisions contrasts with the countermeasures that participants believe could help: 49% of participants think that more information or more resources could effectively address defensive decisions. However, merely increasing resources is unlikely to address the psychological underpinnings that many of the examples for defensive decisions show.
An important element in the operation of the public administration is the influence of politics: 9% of all examples and 14% of all the statements on the causes of defensive decision making point to the intersection with politics, distributed mainly between the categories avoiding conflict and not resisting pressure from superiors. Note that more participants pointed to politics when they speculated about causes; fewer provided explicit examples of defensive decisions where politics features.
Discussion
The results clearly show the prevalence of defensive decisions across all hierarchy levels of the organization. Similar to the medical domain, we find that 80% of managers readily admitted to having decided defensively, compared to 93% of physicians (Studdert et al. 2005). On average, one in four of the most important decisions in the last 12 months was defensive. Note that this is a conservative estimate because managers, if anything, are likely to underreport. These numbers suggest that defensive decision making should be of central concern for organizations. Key determinants for such decision making in the organization are the prevalent approach to failure and employee voice. The qualitative results also highlight that avoiding conflict is a key element in defensive decision making. Such avoidance of conflicts can be diminished if a team takes a more constructive approach to failure and encourages employee voice.
Defensive decision making can overlap with organizational silence, which is characterized by employees not daring to speak up to superiors about problems or issues (Morrison and Milliken 2000). Such an overlap can be the case in the examples that pertain to not resisting the pressure from superiors. If the employee keeps silent and actively decides in favor of the second-best option, such as in the case of not taking the better, external candidate, such a decision contains both motives. If the employee actively engages with superiors and still decides to opt for the second-best option, organizational silence is no longer present as a motive but only defensive decision making. Defensive decisions due to pressure from superiors are difficult to eliminate unless one can convince superiors to minimize pressure and to create a psychologically safe environment where employees are granted sufficient autonomy to make decisions in the face of risk and uncertainty.
Some of the examples (9%) and causes (14%) point to politics as a driver of defensive decision making. However, the regression analysis does not indicate that politics has a significant effect on defensive decision making. A possible explanation for these results is that managers pointed to politics as a scapegoat for their defensive decisions. The difference between the number of examples and the frequency with which politics appears in the causes could also be attributed to such scapegoating.
Participants cite the lack of information as a possible countermeasure to defensive decisions. More information diminishes uncertainty but is often available only after the fact. At the same time, the regression analysis shows that extensive experience is associated with fewer defensive decisions. It is probably fair to assume that the more experience a manager has in an area, the lower the degree of uncertainty.
We conducted a correlational analysis between defensive decisions, approach to failure, employee voice, and the control variables. When we explicitly asked participants to point to causes and countermeasures, such statements show some inconsistency in comparison to the categories that featured in the examples. An experiment would clarify the causal relationship.