Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

One can find very different names for this kind of behaviour in academic literature, sometimes
even several names in one place: “In decision-making, old behaviours that are used in new but
similar situations are called policies. In the psychology of learning, these pre-formulated actions
are called habits. In social psychology they are called scripts.”(Beach, 1997) Just great! Gary Klein
calls ‘the simple match, in which the situation is recognized and what has been done in the past is
done again” as the “first level of the RPD (recognition-primed decision making) model” (Beach,
1997). The author is definitely not in a position to further the academic discussion on the matter,
so, let us call stereotype behaviour just stereotype behaviour.
The set of available reactions is fixed in the memory of an organism and allows it to form
acceptable responses immediately, thus increases the chances for survival. This set depends on
the experience of the organism and the size of its memory, and form another area in the space of
existence – the multitude of familiar situations for which reactions are pre-programmed by the
previous history – a zone of stereotype behaviour.
Stereotypic reactions are not necessarily the best ones. Nobody knows if they are the best or not,
unless the organism has already tried different ways. As long as they work, stereotypic reactions
create insurmountable barriers for the further search.
Another disadvantage related to the stereotype reaction is that it works, even though not optimally,
only if the situation is really the same. A mistake in perception is always possible. Organisms
seldom recall a ‘familiar’ situation by analyzing all parameters – they just recognize one or another
feature of the pattern (stimulus) and presume that the situation is ‘the same’. However, if the
situation is not the same – the stereotype reaction is by no means better than a random search,
and if it is not successful and tends to repeat over and over in the same way (which a random
search would never do) – it may be much worse. An organism may find itself trapped by its
previous experience and not able to try another way out. Then it may die.
For all other situations outside of the zone of stereotypic behaviour, the random search ‘rules the
ball’, if nothing else remains.
Stereotype
reactions
Random search
Picture 3. Zone of stereotype reactions
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