Why won’t you leave the process alone? Exploring emotional, motivational and cognitive mechanisms triggering tampering

Quality management focuses on improvements aimed at enhancing the value created for various stakeholders. However, actions taken in response to a perceived problem sometimes lead to an inferior result rather than an improvement. Such actions have been denoted tampering. As an example, natural variation might unnecessarily be perceived as a problem, where the best way to handle that ‘problem’ would be to not act at all. However, for someone trained in quality management and striving for improvement, doing nothing might be more challenging than acting. The research question studied in this paper is: How do emotional, motivational and cognitive mechanisms influence tampering in problem-solving situations? Through interviews with 17 respondents, 33 tampering situations were identified and analysed. The findings describe emotional, motivational and cognitive mechanisms that lead individuals to take actions leading to tampering. Some examples of these mechanisms are fear of the consequences of not acting, feelings of guilt if not acting to resolve a problem, and taking actions based on experiences of past problem-solving. To counteract this, it is advised to set aside time for reflections before starting problem-solving and to establish an environment encouraging of reflections.