Effects of modularity on the organizational performance in presence of conformity

What is it about?

Conformity is a phenomenon when individuals try to match their behavior to that of their peers. This is usually done to fit into a group or to feel better by doing the same thing everyone else is doing, and in most cases this decreases the performance of teams in organizations. This happens because the team members must make decisions that complement others, and not simply replicate. We have found, however, that the conformity might explain why functional organizations exist, even though they have highly interlinked departments, and most research suggests that departments should be modular and independent from each other - the reason is when different departments work on completely different tasks, they are less likely to conform to other departments, which increases the performance.

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