Attentive Deviance from Standards at CraneSolutions

In this chapter, Ronny Gey, Sarah Langer, and Andrea Fried draw attention to the actual enactment of standards in organizations. They describe a software developing project of the crane manufacturer CraneSolutions which is confronted with a situation where no standards are directly suitable for its niche products. The case of CraneSolutions is a striking example of mainly attentive deviance from standards. The chapter analyses how the organization succeeds in committing to standards while deviating from them attentively. Based on a structurationist framework, the analysis of CraneSolutions enables understanding of the enactment of standards as represented in the interpretative schemes, the facilities, and the social norms of the organization. Moreover, the authors explain organizational deviance from standards as a way of how organizations deal effectively with emerging asymmetries and contradictions during the enactment of standards. This chapter represents one of the two commitment-oriented types of organizational deviance introduced in the book.