Decoupling in a Different Way: Separating Supportive Policies from Observable Practices

Research on decoupling has long found that organizations facing complex external pressures may say one thing, yet do another. This extremely popular theory presumes that outsiders are unable to peer into the organization, to see what it actually does. Yet a large number of organizational practices are increasingly transparent and visible to outsiders. How do organizations respond to the external pressures surrounding these observable practices? This study suggests that they decouple in a different way, by avoiding some of the formal policies that could support those practices, in order to minimize stakeholders’ expectations and preserve the flexibility to change or abandon those practices in the future. The study examines the connection between practices and these formal policy commitments, predicting that organizations are more likely to develop formal policies when they use the associated practices more frequently, but that the relationship is reduced at organizations in institutionally complex environments where competing pressures require greater flexibility. Empirical tests on the community policing policies of a nationwide law enforcement agency panel provide support for those predictions, though no support is obtained for the notion that powerful stakeholders could pressure agencies to adopt these policies more aggressively as the underlying practices become more commonplace.