Toward the Construct Definition of Positive Deviance

Abstract

In this article, the authors develop a definition of positive deviance, a foundational construct in positive organizational scholarship. They offer a normative definition of positive deviance: intentional behaviors that depart from the norms of a referent group in honorable ways. The authors contrast this normative perspective on deviance with statistical, supra conformity, and reactive perspectives on deviance. They also develop research propositions that differentiate positive deviance from related prosocial types of behaviors, including organizational citizenship, whistle-blowing, corporate social responsibility, and creativity/innovation. Finally, the authors offer some initial ideas on how to operationalize positive deviance.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 676 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.