In one line: People in organizations often decide not by weighing costs and benefits but by asking what someone like them, in a role like theirs, is expected to do. That makes culture a powerful driver of behavior, for good or ill.
Core idea
Political scientists James March and Johan Olsen contrasted two logics of decision-making:
- The logic of consequences: choose the option with the best expected outcome.
- The logic of appropriateness: recognize the situation, recall your identity and role, and do what that identity calls for.
Much organizational behavior follows the second logic. The rules of appropriate behavior are learned, institutionalized and taken for granted. People follow them because they feel natural, right and legitimate.
The course handout links this to organizational habitus. An organization’s identity produces behavior that looks rational from inside. Culture then entrenches the assumptions behind it until they cannot be questioned. Habitus is more than procedure: it is the shared language, symbols, operating concepts, and the ideas that can and cannot be spoken.
How it works
- Identity shapes behavior. “We’re the elite team that always delivers” makes certain actions feel obligatory.
- Culture entrenches it. Stories, rewards and norms reproduce the behavior and make its assumptions invisible.
- Breaking the cycle requires a new identity. Because the behavior is held in place by who people think they are, lasting change usually means deliberately creating or adopting a different organizational identity, not just new rules.
In practice
The concept explains why well-meaning engineers can follow a flawed practice for years: it is simply “how we do things here.” It also explains why ethical failures in elite organizations can feel normal from the inside (see Enron and Unethical Leadership). Leaders can bring the hidden logic to the surface by asking, Why do we do it this way? Who decided? What would we do if we were starting fresh? Real change has to reach identity, which is why the most effective change efforts reframe who the team is, not just what it does.
Questions to ask yourself
- What does my organization consider “appropriate” that an outsider might question?
- Which unspoken ideas in my team would be awkward to say out loud?
- When I decide, am I weighing consequences or acting out a role?
Connections
- Culture frameworks: Culture and Climate, Levels of Culture, Iceberg Model.
- Ethical consequences: Ethical Reasoning, Enron and Unethical Leadership.
- Capabilities exercised: Ethical Actions and Integrity, Inquiry, Courage.
Sources
- Course handout on organizational habitus.
- March and Olsen on the logic of appropriateness [1]