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In every community there are certain individuals (the Positive Deviants) whose special practices/strategies/behaviours enable them to find better solutions to problems than their neighbours who have access to the same resources.
According to Jerry Sternin, who coined the term Positive Deviance, ‘the traditional approach for social and organizational change doesn’t work. It never has.’ He explains why it is not possible to import change from the outside in but instead, real change begins from the inside.
What is the basic tenet of the PD approach? Basically, solutions to community
problems already exist within the community. It is an approach that identifies
the unique practices of some community members that set them apart from others
within the same community and allow them to cope more successfully within the
same resource base. It finds the high performers amidst the same adverse
conditions that "out-perform" their neighbors. It taps those that have learned
to adapt, cope and successfully deal with nutrition before economic improvements
occur or clean water and sanitation are accessible to all. One of the processes
of PD is A Positive Deviance Inquiry (PDI) which is a process of discovery
"Positive deviance focuses on those extreme cases of excellence when \norganizations and their members break free from the constraints of norms to \nconduct honorable behaviors," Spreitzer says. "It has profound effects on the \nindividuals and organizations that partake and benefit from such activities."
The potential role for positive deviance is vast. For example, which
rural Kenyan families optimally use insecticide impregnated bednets,
and how can they motivate their neighbours? How can South African
policy makers integrate the behaviours and thinking of teenagers who
practise "safe sex"? What can we learn from a poor, uninsured
Latina mother who succeeds in properly managing her child's
diabetes or asthma? What about other intractable, deadly impasses of
our time—the Kashmir crisis, Israeli-Palestinian mayhem, or
insurgency in Iraq? We believe that positive deviance is a valuable
tool that should be part of international health policy makers'
toolbox for the 21st century.
Nevertheless, I posit that the use of Positive Deviance technique incorporating
deeply embedded cultural sanctions against female smoking is a useful approach
to limiting the influence of tobacco marketing on increasing the proportion of
female smokers in African and Asian societies, particularly in rural settings.
In the sociological literature, there
have been only a few attempts at studying positive deviance (Ben-Yehuda, 1990;
Dodge, 1985), and they have been met with strong opposition to the notion that positive deviance can exist as a concept (Goode, 1991; Sagarin, 1985).
Positive deviance is foundational to the
POS movement (Cameron et al., 2003), and positively deviant behavior has profound
effects on the individuals and organizations who partake and benefit from
such behaviors (Quinn, 1996; Quinn&Quinn, 2002).We highlight these effects
in cases of positive deviance described throughout this article. Yet the positive
deviance construct requires more thorough theoretical development to establish
its legitimacy and to facilitate empirical research.
The rise of pro-ams, passionate amateurs who act like professionals
Positive Deviance
Reviewed: January 2008
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In every community there are certain individuals (the Positive Deviants) whose special practices/strategies/behaviours enable them to find better solutions to problems than their neighbours who have access to the same resources.
According to Jerry Sternin, who coined the term Positive Deviance, ‘the traditional approach for social and organizational change doesn’t work. It never has.’ He explains why it is not possible to import change from the outside in but instead, real change begins from the inside.