| Scholars have amassed a great amount of evidence on the adoption and persistence of organizational practices independently of their objective efficacy (e.g. Abrahamson, 1996; Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006; Zbaracki, 1998). Institutional scholars explain the adoption and persistence of organizational practices by institutional forces (e.g. Tolbert & Zucker, 1983; Westphal, Gulati, & Shortell, 1997) but rarely consider how within firm dynamics contribute to this phenomenon (Staw & Epstein, 2000; Zbaracki, 1998). Borrowing from a diverse set of psychological research (e.g. Bandura, 1969; Loewenstein, 1994; Staw, 1981), this dissertation proposes that organizational improvement practices may persist independently of their objective efficacy because practitioners become devoted to the practices through active engagement with the associated beliefs and actions. This dissertation proposes a framework for how people become devoted to an organizational practice for innovation---the human centered design methodology. The emerging framework was inducted from a blend of an eighteen-month ethnography, five supporting case studies, pertinent behavioral theory, and descriptive writings on the human centered design methodology. The framework captures how people become devoted when enacting a set of work practices independently of observing expected outcomes. The informants expressed devotion to three work practices: human observation, group brainstorming, and rapid prototyping. The work practices triggered three psychological mechanisms leading to devotion to the human centered design methodology. When enacting the work practices, people experienced curiosity ("I didn't know that, and I want to know more"), perceived control ("I can do this"), and consistency ("I will do this because that's what I do"). This framework makes theoretical contributions to the study of the psychology of devotion and to the study of work---understanding how devotion is initiated and sustained, why work practices persist, and non-traditional effectiveness outcomes of work practices. The implications for managing for innovation and devotion are discussed. |
