It is hard to believe that Summer is almost over. I’m continuing my series of stories about ideas and concepts that I have found to be useful along my journey. This month’s story is about how I found the Theory of Planned Behavior to be a useful lens for looking at my doctoral research. It might be a bit of a nerdy read, but, as Grandpa Lococo used to say, “Danny, what are you going to do?” Your feedback is always welcome.

In this post:

 

Story: Getting to the TPB

Early in my career, I spent a great deal of time in information systems development. An often asked question in project management is, “Does it make sense to do this?” The fields of project management and consulting require more sophisticated language. The question, “Does this make sense?” was stated, “Let’s evaluate the feasibility of the concept,” or something similarly fancy.
Project feasibility can be looked at through three lenses: economic, technical, and operational.

• Economic feasibility is about understanding whether the project makes financial sense. It involves comparing the costs of the project to the expected benefits. If the benefits (like profits or savings) outweigh the costs, then the project is considered economically feasible. Essentially, it answers the question: “Is this project worth the investment?”
• Technical feasibility examines whether the tools, equipment, skills, and technology needed to complete the project are available or can be obtained. In simple terms, it answers: “Do we have the right tools and skills to make this project work?”
• Operational feasibility assesses how well the project will fit into the current operations. It considers whether the people involved are ready and able to use or support it. It answers the question: “Can this project be smoothly integrated into our day-to-day work?”

Business systems analysis involves the illumination of factors affecting economic feasibility and an awareness of operational feasibility. I was in a meeting where a proposal was on the table to convert virtually all of the organization’s information systems to one software vendor. The software was being offered at a 90% discount from the retail price. The price of the annual support of the software was based on the retail prices, amounting to millions of dollars per year. It quickly became clear that the project would not be economically feasible over time.
Operational feasibility is much harder to evaluate. One project I participated on was the integration of information systems used by all of the law enforcement agencies in Milwaukee County. In one heated design meeting, a Captain of the Milwaukee Police Department proclaimed, “We won’t change.” In some ways that was refreshing: we knew where we stood. Resistance to operational change often takes a more subtle form that can prove to be far more disruptive. Transitions to large scale, integrated systems are often plagued by deeply entrenched practices. The phrase, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” applies to the challenge of sorting out barriers to operational feasibility.

I found operational feasibility far more interesting than economic or technical feasibility. Prior to committing to my doctoral studies, I came across a number of articles that described what seemed like a glaring paradox regarding the inclusion of persons with disabilities (PWD) in the labor force. This paradox had the look and feel of the challenges I used to see while evaluating operational feasibility. Some employers found it infeasible to include PWD and other employers found it relatively simple to do the same. My curiosity was peaked at this paradox. Simply concluding that persons with disabilities are discriminated against in the workplace wasn’t a satisfactory conclusion.

The paradox of some do/some don’t led me to my doctoral studies. A question doctoral advisors ask of their students is, “What conceptual framework are you using as you explore your dissertation question.” Huh? What? I couldn’t answer this question. Actually, I barely understood the question. In short, the conceptual framework is the lens through which the researcher is looking at the research question. OK, that only helped so much.

Then, one day, I was reading the article, “Understanding employers’ hiring intentions in relation to qualified workers with disabilities.” As I read, my conceptual framework lept off the page and bit me. I had never heard of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) before but within the time it took to read the article, I knew what a conceptual framework was and that the Theory of Planned Behavior was the lens through which I approached my research question.

Theory of Planned Behavior

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), developed by Icek Ajzen, helps to understand what influences people’s actions or behaviors. According to the TPB, three main factors drive intentions to carry out a specific behavior:

1. Attitude Toward the Behavior: how a person feels about the behavior. If they believe that the behavior will lead to positive outcomes, they are more likely to do it.
2. Subjective Norms: Social pressure or the influence of others. If a person believes that important people in their life (like family or friends) think they should do something, they are more likely to do it.
3. Perceived Behavioral Control: Whether the person feels they have control over the behavior. If they believe they can easily do the behavior, they are more likely to try it.

These three factors—attitude, subjective norms, and control—help predict whether someone will engage in a particular behavior. The Theory of Planned Behavior can be used to understand why people make certain choices and how to encourage positive behavior changes.

The Theory of Planned Behavior served as a simple way of organizing the materials from the hundreds of academic journals I reviewed as part of my dissertation. One of the things I liked about the TPB was the parallels I noticed between operational feasibility and perceived behavioral control. In both, if people don’t believe the system (or the behavior) will generate a positive outcome, they won’t support it.

The TPB served me well as a conceptual framework but confounded me when it came to my research design. Armed with the three prongs of the TPB (attitude, subjective norms, and control), I thought it would be a simple task to understand how organizations provide an inclusive environment for persons with disabilities (PWD). I was wrong. The majority of organizations have clear statements of their intention to be inclusive of a wide variety of individuals, including PWD. Unfortunately, reconciling the barriers to employment faced by PWD with these grand statements of inclusion proved to be insurmountable. That is when I learned about social desirability bias (saying what someone things the listener wants to hear).

I have talked with hiring authorities and persons with disabilities (PWD) who have described situations where inclusive practices took place and where they didn’t. The common thread going through inclusive environments was not a fancy statement of inclusion. It was not (only) a hiring authority with an inclusive attitude. It is a hiring authority who believes (and can deliver on those beliefs) that they can engage the organization infrastructure required to be inclusive of persons with disabilities.

The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) has proven to be a powerful tool for framing organizational challenges. Unlike project feasibility, looking at how systems fit into organizations, the TPB looks at how individuals behave in day-to-day situations. Individuals are often drawn to organizations based upon their stated normative expectations. Organizations retain employees as a result of their actual organizational norms. While normative expectations have been shown to be the most significant influencer on intentions to behave in a certain way, actual control of appropriate resources is a critical element in the execution of specific behaviors. In my research on the inclusion of persons with disabilities (PWD), actual control is a parallel to technical feasibility. Perceived behavioral control is parallel to operational feasibility.

And… Like operational feasibility, perceived behavioral control eats normative expectations for breakfast.

References:

• Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 50(2), 179-211.
• Domzal, C., Houtenville, A., & Sharma, R. (2008). Survey of employer perspectives on the employment of people with disabilities. Prepared under contract to the Office of Disability and Employment Policy, U.S. Department of Labor.
• Fraser, R. T., Johnson, K., Hebert, J., Ajzen, I., Copeland, J., Brown, P., & Chan, F. (2010). Understanding employers’ hiring intentions in relation to qualified workers with disabilities: Preliminary findings. Journal of occupational rehabilitation, 20, 420-426.
• Job Accommodation Network. (2015). Workplace accommodations: Low cost, high impact. from http://AskJAN.org/media/lowcosthighimpact.html

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