Not intervening: what inaction alone cannot justify
In an organisation, not intervening may seem less consequential than changing a procedure or initiating corrective action. The useful managerial question is specific: how can we check that abstaining rests on a comparison of consequences rather than greater leniency towards the harm it allows to occur?
What the literature establishes
Mark Spranca, Elisa Minsk and Jonathan Baron (1991, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) studied situations in which harm results either from an action or from an omission. Their experiments show that participants can judge an omission less harshly than an action with comparable consequences. The distinction between doing and allowing can therefore influence judgement independently of the harm alone.
When avoiding intervention becomes a preference
Ilana Ritov and Jonathan Baron (1990, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making) examined this asymmetry in hypothetical vaccination choices. Some participants rejected vaccination even when the risk of death associated with the vaccine was lower than that associated with the disease. The finding highlights a particular difficulty: accepting a risk linked to an intervention can be harder than accepting a greater risk through inaction.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that action should always be favoured; these studies do not justify that conclusion. An intervention may entail additional costs, breach an obligation or produce effects that are difficult to anticipate. The discipline lies in comparing the consequences and constraints of both options, not in replacing a preference for inaction with a preference for intervention. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these findings cannot measure
These studies rely on experimental scenarios and do not measure the prevalence of omission bias in organisations in Berne. Nor do they demonstrate that a decision checklist is sufficient to correct it. In practice, a further difficulty remains: the risks of intervention are often detailed in a decision file, while those of abstaining remain implicit.
A practical check in Berne
Within SHR’s « Prise de décision » programme, one exercise is to examine, over a month, documented choices between intervention and abstention in a Berne-based team working in federal administration, public health, telecommunications or precision manufacturing. For each choice, record the expected consequences, uncertainties and constraints of both options over the same time horizon, for example when changing a procedure, launching a preventive measure or replacing equipment. The indicator is the proportion of these files that explicitly describe the consequences of abstaining alongside those of intervening, supported by dated records. This measure checks whether the assessment is symmetrical, not whether action is superior or the eventual decision is sound. To go further: explore the Decision-making training in Bern, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Decision-making in Bern
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