6.6.2 Innovators and Adaptors in Organizations

Organizations in general and especially organizations which are large in size and budget have a tendency to encourage bureaucracy and adaptation in order to minimize risk. It has been, said by Weber, and Parsons that the aims of a bureaucratic structure are precision, reliability and efficiency and that the bureaucratic structure exerts constant pressure on officials to be methodical, prudent and disciplined, and to attain an unusual degree of conformity. These are the qualities that the adaptation‑innovation theory attributes to the 'adaptor' personality. For the marked adaptor, the longer an institutional practice has existed, the more he feels it can be taken for granted. So when confronted by a problem, he does not see it as a stimulus to question or change the structure in which the problem is embedded, but seeks a solution within that structure, in ways already tried  and understood‑ways which are safe, sure and predictable. He can be relied upon to carry out a thorough, disciplined search for ways to eliminate problems by 'doing things better' with a minimum of risk and a maximum of continuity and stability. This behaviour contrasts strongly with that of the marked innovation. The latter's solution, because it is less understood, and its assumptions untested, appears more risky, less sound, involves more “Ripple-effect”  changes in areas less obviously needing to be affected; in short, it brings about changes with  outcomes that cannot be envisaged so precisely. This diminution of predictive certainty is unsettling and not to be undertaken lightly, if at all, by most people‑but particularly by adaptors, who feel not only more loyal to consensus policy but less willing to jeopardize the integrity of the system, or even the institution. The innovator in contrast to the adaptor is liable to be less concerned with the views of others, more abrasive in the presentation of his solution, and more at home in a turbulent environment. He is liable to be seen as less oriented towards company needs (since his perception of what is needed may differ from that of the  adaptors) and less concerned with the effect on other people of the methods by which he pursues his goals than adaptors find tolerable. Tolerance of the innovator is at its lowest end when adaptors feel pressure from the need for quick and radical change. Yet it is the innovators' least acceptable features which make them as necessary to healthy institutions as the adaptors' more easily recognized virtues make them necessary.