Learned helplessness is not just a feature of individuals. Teams can also learn to passively let managers direct them. People can become desensitized to uncomfortable situations and therefore not act to change them. Organizations learn to be helpless when cues from the environment are coupled with a history of success or failure. People have certain assumptions about likely outcomes and these assumptions influence behavior.
Many factors affect the attributions made by individuals about their ability to affect a situation.
For example, bureaucratic organizations make it difficult to do anything not defined by the rules. Employees feel frustrated and are predisposed toward learned helplessness even when conditions change. Similarly, when goals are unrealistic and unachievable, employees learn to underachieve. Learned helplessness dulls awareness and innovation because people respond to a new situation with the assumption that they are incapable of doing anything to change events. People can learn to counter this helplessness by observing others, by trial and error, and from job successes.