The Effects of Information Cascades on Work Culture and Organization
Work culture often drives how efficient a company is; it affects employee performance and team engagement, and it impacts the happiness and satisfaction of people. Because of this, companies’ success highly depends on their work culture. They can have the most innovative technology and creative strategies, but without certain behaviors and actions within the groups of people in the company, it’s almost impossible to survive. However, those who have worked in groups, no matter at a company or college club, know that building team and work culture is not something that can simply be enforced and built. Rather, work culture typically follows a cascading effect similar to the information cascades that we have studied in this course.
First, positive organizational cascades can frequently be found in work culture. For example, through a 2010 study conducted at the University of California, San Diego and Harvard, researchers showed that cooperative and good behavior can spread through human social networks through acts of cooperation, generosity, and just overall positive behaviors. When one individual reaches out to another employee to grab a meal outside of work life, they are encouraging that employee to be open to increased social interaction within the work scope. This will then prompt that individual to potentially explore further social relationships and interactions with other employees, forming a network of more social and engaged members of the work community. This sequential manner of interactions follows the informational cascade phenomenon that ultimately allows work groups to build better relationships and culture.
However, work cultures have proved to easily give in to negative information cascades, as negative behaviors can easily cascade through a network of people. Even if one individual in a team displays negative behaviors, like rudeness, narcissism, or disrespect, conflicts can easily build, causing a cascading effect of poor behavior that multiplies within the work network. Even those who are not directly affected by the first negative effects will feel the deterioration of collaboration and positive relationships in the workplace, revealing a triggering domino effect. This will then, in turn, result in the poor performance of individuals in the entire company.
Ultimately, work organization and culture cannot be simply built in one area of the company; it is something that needs to be analyzed among cascading effects that will ultimately drive the success or failure of a company. At all levels of a company, collaborative and open communication must exist and employee concerns must ultimately be addressed so that information cascading can naturally take its place within the network in a positive manner.
Source: https://www.insurancethoughtleadership.com/risk-management/how-cascades-can-build-work-culture