The Discontinuity Effect: What and Why

To make organizations more manageable, we partition them into functions: Marketing, Sales, Human Resources, Information Technology, Facilities, and so on. The very largest enterprises consist of groups and divisions, each, in turn, further partitioned into functions. Although the parts nominally strive for the goals of the enterprise, they do, at times, compete for resources, attention, credit for successes, and to avoid blame for failures. When they compete, they often exhibit what social psychologists call the discontinuity effect.

Researchers have found that groups interacting with groups tend to favor competitive behaviors over collaborative approaches more often than do individuals interacting with individuals, or groups interacting with individuals, or individuals interacting with groups. Although the effect intensifies with group size, the greatest difference in competitiveness occurs between one-on-one and two-on-two interactions, hence the name, discontinuity effect.

Research is ongoing, but two lines of investigation seem most promising.

People tend to distrust groups

We tend to trust In the workplace, interventions
that build trust between
groups might help
foster collaborationmore easily those who are similar to ourselves. Since we see members of other groups as inherently different, they can seem less trustworthy than do members of our own group.

In the workplace, interventions that build trust between groups might help foster collaboration. Social events, rotating seconding assignments, and other activities that foster personal relationships across group boundaries might therefore mitigate the discontinuity effect. Agile teams, which are often formed this way, might owe some of their success to reducing the discontinuity effect.

Group settings encourage choice shifts

A choice shift is the outcome of a change in the attitudes of the members of a group that results from interactions within the group. For example, even if only a few people in Group A distrust Group B, they can influence others in Group A to adopt a similar distrusting attitude. If their influence is strong enough, Group A might adopt a deeper distrust of Group B than its members, on average, would have adopted on their own.

This phenomenon might be responsible for the polarization that occurs in political parties and online environments, where people with extreme views have access to those with more temperate views. In the workplace, through email and social media, their influence can bring about a shift towards competition in the choices groups make regarding workplace decisions.

Most experiments reported in the discontinuity effect literature differ from workplace settings in that they usually study the interactions of only two entities at a time, in various combinations of groups or individuals. The real world is more complicated, with multiple interacting entities that must choose between competitive and collaborative behaviors. And most real-world entities are subordinate to managers or parent organizations that demand collaboration, while at the same time arranging structures that demand competition. The experimental results might or might not be applicable to these more complicated situations, but they nevertheless provide some insight into human psychology. It's wise to apply the principles of risk management to limit the damage the discontinuity effect can do.  Top    Next Issue

Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague the target of a bully? Destructive conflict can ruin organizations. But if we believe that all conflict is destructive, and that we can somehow eliminate conflict, or that conflict is an enemy of productivity, then we're in conflict with Conflict itself. Read 101 Tips for Managing Conflict to learn how to make peace with conflict and make it an organizational asset. Order Now!

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Conflict Management:

Communication Templates: II

Communication templates are patterns that are so widely used that once identified, nearly everyone recognizes them. In this Part II we consider some of the more toxic — less innocuous — communication templates.

Masked Messages

Sometimes what we say to each other isn't what we really mean. We mask the messages, or we form them into what are usually positive structures, to make them appear to be something less malicious than they are. Here are some examples of masked messages.

The Perils of Political Praise

Political Praise is any public statement, praising (most often) an individual, and including a characterization of the individual or the individual's deeds, and which spins or distorts in such a way that it advances the praiser's own political agenda, possibly at the expense of the one praised.

Creating Toxic Conflict: I

Many managers seem to operate as if their primary goal is to create toxic conflict among their subordinates. Here's a collection of methods for sowing toxic conflict that can help bad managers become worse managers.

Rescheduling: The Paradox of Politics

When the current project schedule no longer leads to acceptable results, we must reschedule. Sometimes political factors compel us to not only delay our results, but also to produce those results in ways that accommodate organizational politics.

See also Conflict Management and Conflict Management for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming January 22: Storming: Obstacle or Pathway?

The Storming stage of Tuckman's model of small group development is widely misunderstood. Fighting the storms, denying they exist, or bypassing them doesn't work. Letting them blow themselves out in a somewhat-controlled manner is the path to Norming and Performing. Available here and by RSS on January 22.

And on January 29: A Framework for Safe Storming

The Storming stage of Tuckman's development sequence for small groups is when the group explores its frustrations and degrees of disagreement about both structure and task. Only by understanding these misalignments is reaching alignment possible. Here is a framework for this exploration. Available here and by RSS on January 29.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info