How do organizational transformation decisions move from agreement to implementation?
The study examines how decision processes relate to patterns of voice, silence, and behavioral withdrawal, and how those patterns relate to decision quality and acceptance.
Doctoral research at ISPA University Institute.
Consensus can look stronger than it is.
Illusory agreement is the project's working term for a proposed pattern in which public alignment coexists with private reservations, withheld voice, and later behavioral withdrawal. The research will test whether such a profile emerges in the data.
The study focuses on significant organizational transformation decisions. It examines what people say, what remains unspoken, how they respond after a decision, and how these patterns relate to decision quality and acceptance.
Decision processes, behavioral responses, and decision robustness.
The project examines relationships across three parts of a transformation decision.
Decision process
How systematically alternatives and evidence are considered, and how genuinely people participate in the decision.
Behavioral profiles
Patterns of voice, silence, and behavioral withdrawal that emerge around the decision.
Decision robustness
The quality of the decision and the extent to which it is accepted by the people expected to implement it.
Profiles
What patterns of voice, silence, and withdrawal emerge around organizational transformation decisions?
Decision process
How are procedural rationality and participation related to those patterns?
Robustness and implementation
How are the patterns related to decision quality and acceptance, and how are they experienced during implementation?
Three studies, moving from patterns to relationships and lived experience.
Profile analysis
The first study examines which behavioral profiles emerge from professionals' responses.
Relationship testing
The second study tests how decision processes relate to those profiles and how the profiles relate to decision quality and acceptance.
Interviews
The third study uses qualitative interviews to explore how illusory agreement may emerge and become consequential during implementation.
Professional experience, not organizational diagnosis.
Participants reflect on one significant organizational transformation decision in which they were directly involved. Experiences are relevant whether implementation went well or became difficult.
The study does not evaluate organizations, produce scores, or provide consulting recommendations. Organizations and professional communities can support the research by sharing the open study invitation.