The Power of Babel: When Misunderstanding can be Productive

Özgecan Koçak; Phanish Puranam

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/18956

Authors

Özgecan Koçak Goizueta Business School, Emory University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6974-2382

Özgecan Koçak is Associate Pofessor of Organization & Management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School (USA). Her research focuses on how shared understandings (such as communication codes, categorization systems, and identity schema) emerge and shape behavior in organizations and markets.
Phanish Puranam INSEAD https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0032-8538

Phanish Puranam is the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Strategy and Organization Design at INSEAD (Singapore). His current research explores how digital algorithms are shaping organizations as tools, templates, and teammates.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/18956

Keywords:

Productive misunderstandings, strategic ambiguity, miscommunication, communication

Abstract

Misunderstandings often lead to accidents, delays, missed opportunities, waste, and conflict in organizations. However, on occasion, they can also lead to beneficial outcomes, at least for one of the parties involved. Prior scholarship on productive misunderstandings and strategic ambiguity illustrates this with a range of examples in diverse contexts, but there is no coherent framework to understand the conditions under which misunderstandings can be beneficial. This paper elucidates three mechanisms — establishing truce, encouraging search, and creating resonance — through which misunderstandings can create positive outcomes, as well as the different boundary conditions for each mechanism.

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The Power of Babel: When Misunderstanding can be Productive

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