Detailed Conceptual Analysis and Measurement of Organizational Blindness (Organizational Myopia): An Evaluation Through the Developed Scale

Abstract

As a medical term, blindness is described by the World Health Organization as ?a status of only having 1/20 of regular vision or less among all creatures after taking all adjustments into account? (WHO, 2015). On the other hand, based on this description, traces of blindness investigated as ?bodily impairment specific to creatures? in health sciences can be faced at organizational level as well. The purpose of the present study is to bring the concept into Turkish literature by developing a Turkish scale for definition of organizational blindness concept which has not been adequately investigated within the relevant literature from the theoretical and empirical aspects, determination its dimensions, antecedents, consequences and its measurement. Conceptual section of the study was structured by utilizing limited number of studies reported in the relevant literature. Within the scope of development of the scale, the surveys consisted of 28 expressions and four sub-dimensions were prepared by taking dimensions used by Catino (2013) who wrote the book with title of ?Organizational Myopia? and by consulting specialists to measure organizational blindness; then their validity analysis was conducted through a pilot application. The survey was conducted face-to-face through convenience sampling method with 231 employees from the energy industry and another 231 from the health industry. Obtained findings were analyzed through the LISREL and the SPSS software. Finally, a scale for measuring organizational blindness concept which has only been considered by limited number of studies in management literature. Based on the analyses in the present study, it was determined that organizational blindness is composed of four different sub-dimensions: ?type of personality, degree of routineness, organization structure and industry structure?. On the other hand, based on the comparison of organizations included in the scope of the study in terms of organizational blindness, it was found regarding the four sub-dimensions of the concept that health employees have higher blindness perception with respect to energy industry employees.