The Nurturing of Immoral Executives: ‘Jumpers’ Covertly Concealed Managerial Ignorance
DOI: 255 Downloads 6591 Views
Author(s)
Abstract
‘Jumping’ between firms causes job-knowledge gaps that encourage use of covertly concealed managerial ignorance (hereafter CCMI), defending authority by either detachment and/or autocratic seduction-coercion. CCMI use causes distrust and ignorance cycles, which engender mismanagement that bars performance-based promotion and encourages immoral careerism (Im-C). Such careerism is a known managerial malady, but explaining its emergence proved challenging as managerial ignorance is often concealed as a dark secret on organizations’ dark side by conspiracies of silence. A 5-year semi-native anthropological study of five ‘jumper’-managed automatic processing plants and their parent inter-kibbutz co-operatives found a positive correlation between ‘jumper’ statuses, experience of ‘jumps’ and practicing CCMI and Im-C. ‘Jumpers’ large knowledge gaps deter ignorance exposure, encourage CCMI and together with related factors generate Im-C. These findings suggest that ‘jumping’ careers tend to nurture immoral executives. Remedies for this corporate malady are suggested, as well as further study of ‘jumping’ and CCMI and Im-C.
Keywords
‘Jumping’ career advance, covertly concealed managerial ignorance, immoral careerism, managerial vulnerable involvement, distrust and ignorance cycles.
Cite this paper
Reuven Shapira,
The Nurturing of Immoral Executives: ‘Jumpers’ Covertly Concealed Managerial Ignorance
, SCIREA Journal of Sociology.
Volume 3, Issue 2, April 2019 | PP. 60-92.
References
[ 1 ] | Ailon, G. 2015. “From superstars to devils: The ethical discourse on managerial figures involved in a corporate scandal”. Organization, 22, 78-99. |
[ 2 ] | Arad, N. 1995. “More secret than the nuclear reactor, larger than the Electric Corporation”. Yedi’ot Achronot, September 15 (Hebrew). |
[ 3 ] | Armstrong, P. 1987. “Engineers, management and trust”. Work, Employment and Society, 1, 421-440. |
[ 4 ] | Baralou, E. and H. Tsoukas. 2015. How is new organizational knowledge created in a virtual context? An ethnographic study. Organization Studies, 36, 593-620. |
[ 5 ] | Bennis, W. 1989. Why leaders can’t lead. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. |
[ 6 ] | Blau, M. 1955. The dynamics of bureaucracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. |
[ 7 ] | Boddy, C. R. P., R. Ladyshewsky and P. Galvin. 2010. “Leaders without ethics in global business: Corporate psychopaths”. Journal of Public Affairs, 10, 121-138. |
[ 8 ] | Boulding, K. E. 1968. The organizational revolution. Chicago: Quadrangle. |
[ 9 ] | Bower, J. L. 2007. The CEO within. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. |
[ 10 ] | Bratton, V. K., and K. M. Kacmar. 2004. “Extreme careerism: The dark side of impression management”. In R. Griffin and A. O’Leary-Kelly (Eds.), The dark side of organizational behavior. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 291-308. |
[ 11 ] | Brown, J. S. 2001. “Knowledge and organization: A social-practice perspective”. Organization Science, 12, 198-213. |
[ 12 ] | Brumann, C. 2000. “The dominance of one and its perils: Charismatic leadership and branch structures in utopian communes”. Journal of Anthropological Research, 56, 425-451. |
[ 13 ] | Buckingham, M., and C. Coffman. 1999. First break all the rules. New York: Simon and Schuster. |
[ 14 ] | Burawoy, M. 1979. Manufacturing consent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. |
[ 15 ] | Burns, J. M. 1978. Leadership. New York: Harper. |
[ 16 ] | Burns, T., and G. M. Stalker. 1961. The management of innovation. London: Tavistock. |
[ 17 ] | Campbell, R. J., V. J. Sessa and J. Taylor. 1995. “Choosing top leaders: Learning to do better”. Issues and observations, 15, 1-5. Greensboro (NC): Centre for Creative Leadership. |
[ 18 ] | Ciulla, J. B. (Ed.) 1998. Ethics, the heart of leadership. Westport (CN): Praeger. |
[ 19 ] | Collins, H. M. and R. Evans. 2007. Rethinking expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. |
[ 20 ] | Collins, H. M. and G. Sanders. 2007. “They give you the keys and say ‘drive it!’: Managers, referred expertise, and other expertises”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 38, 621-641. |
[ 21 ] | Collins, H. M. and M. Weinel. 2011. “Transmuted expertise: How technical non-experts can assess experts and expertise”. Argumentation, 25, 401-415. |
[ 22 ] | Collins, J. 2001. Good to great. New York: HarperCollins. |
[ 23 ] | Collinson, D. 2005. “Questions of distance”. Leadership, 1, 235-250. |
[ 24 ] | Dalton, M. 1959. Men who manage. New York: Wiley. |
[ 25 ] | Davis, G. F. 1994. “Corporate elite and the politics of corporate control”. Current perspectives in social theory, Supplement, 1, 215-238. |
[ 26 ] | Diefenbach, T. 2013. “Incompetent or immoral leadership? Why many managers and change leaders get it wrong”. In B. Todenem and B. Burnes (Eds.), Organizational change, leadership and ethics. New York: Routledge, pp. 149-170. |
[ 27 ] | Dore, R. 1973. British factory - Japanese factory. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press. |
[ 28 ] | Erdal, D. 2011. Beyond the corporation. London: Bodley Head. |
[ 29 ] | Fast, N. J., E. R. Burris and C. A. Bartel. 2014. “Managing to stay in the dark: Managerial self-efficacy, ego-defensiveness, and the aversion to employee voice”. Academy of Management Journal, 57, 1013-1034. |
[ 30 ] | Feldman, D. C., and B. A. Weitz. 1991. “From the invisible hand to the gladhand: Understanding the careerist orientation to work”. Human Resource Management, 30, 237-257. |
[ 31 ] | Fine, G. A. 2012. Tiny publics. New York: Russell Sage. |
[ 32 ] | Flyvbjerg, B. 2006. “Making organization research matter: Power, values, and phronesis”. In: S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy, T. B. Lawrence and W. R. Nord (Eds.), Sage handbook of organization studies. Thousand Oaks (CA): Sage, pp. 370-387. |
[ 33 ] | Fox, A. 1974. Beyond contract. London: Faber. |
[ 34 ] | Galbraith, J. K. 1971. The new industrial state. Houghton Mifflin. Boston. |
[ 35 ] | Gannon, M. J. 1983. “Managerial ignorance”. Business Horizons, 26, 26-32. |
[ 36 ] | Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. |
[ 37 ] | Geneen, H. 1984. Managing. New York: Avon. |
[ 38 ] | Gini, Al. 1998. “Moral leadership and business ethics”. In: J. B. Ciulla (Ed.) Ethics, the heart of leadership. Westport (CN): Praeger, pp. 25-43. |
[ 39 ] | Gioia, D. A., K. G. Corley and A. L. Hamilton. 2013. “Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: Notes on the Gioia Methodology”. Organizational Research Methods, 16, 15-31. |
[ 40 ] | Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City (NY): Doubleday. |
[ 41 ] | Gouldner, A. W. 1954. Patterns of industrial bureaucracy. New York: Free Press. |
[ 42 ] | Gouldner, A. W. 1955. Wildcat strike. New York: Harper. |
[ 43 ] | Graham, J. W. 1991. “Servant-leadership in organizations: Inspirational and moral”. The Leadership Quarterly, 2, 105-119. |
[ 44 ] | Griffin, R. and A. O’Leary-Kelly (Eds.) 2004. The dark side of organizational behavior. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. |
[ 45 ] | Grove, A. S. 1996. Only the paranoid survive. New York: Doubleday. |
[ 46 ] | Groysberg, B., A. N. McLean and N. Nohria. 2006. “Are leaders portable?” Harvard Business Review, May, reprint R0605E, Retrieved 11.1.2013: www.hbr.org. |
[ 47 ] | Guest, R. H. 1962. Organizational change. London: Tavistock. |
[ 48 ] | Hambrick, D. C. 2007. “Upper echelons theory: An update”. Academy of Management Review, 32, 334-343. |
[ 49 ] | Henderson, W. D. 1990. The Hollow Army. New York: Greenwood. |
[ 50 ] | Hogan, R. and J. Hogan. 2001. “Assessing leadership: A view from the dark side”. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9, 40-51. |
[ 51 ] | Hughes, E. C. 1958. Man and their work. Glenco (IL): Free Press. |
[ 52 ] | Ingvaldsen, J. A., H. Holtskog and G. Ringen, 2013. “Unlocking work standards through systematic work observation: Implications for team supervision”. Team Performance Management, 19, 279-291. |
[ 53 ] | Izraeli, D. N. 1977. “‘Settling-in’: An interactionist perspective on the entry of the new manager”. Pacific Sociological Review, 20, 135-160. |
[ 54 ] | Jackall, R. 1988. Moral mazes. New York: Oxford University Press. |
[ 55 ] | Johnson, C. E. 2008. “The rise and fall of Carly Fiorina”. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 15, 188-196. |
[ 56 ] | Johnson, C. E. 2009. Ethical challenges of leadership. Los Angeles: Sage. |
[ 57 ] | Kanter, R. M. 1977. Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books. |
[ 58 ] | Karaevli, A. 2007. “Performance consequences of new CEO ‘outsiderness’: Moderating effects of pre-and post-succession contexts”. Strategic Management Journal, 28, 681-706. |
[ 59 ] | Kets De Vries, M. F. R. 1993. Leaders, Fools, and Impostors. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. |
[ 60 ] | Khurana, R. 2002. Searching for a corporate savior. Princeton (NY): Princeton University Press. |
[ 61 ] | Klein, G. 1998. Sources of power. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. |
[ 62 ] | Kressel, G. M. 1974. Stratification versus equality in the kibbutz. Tel Aviv: Cherikover (Hebrew). |
[ 63 ] | Kruger, J., and D. Dunning. 1999. “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments”. Journal of Personal and Social Psychology, 77, 1121-1134. |
[ 64 ] | Levenson, B. 1961. “Bureaucratic succession”. In A. Etzioni (Ed.), Complex organizations. New York: Holt, pp. 362-375. |
[ 65 ] | Lewin, K. 1951. The field theory in social science. New York: Harper. |
[ 66 ] | Linstead, S., G. Marechal and R. W. Griffin. 2014. “Theorizing and researching the dark side of organization”. Organization Studies, 35, 165-188. |
[ 67 ] | Luthans, F. 1988. “Successful versus effective managers”. Academy of Management Executive, 2, 127-132. |
[ 68 ] | Mehri, D. 2005. Notes from Toyota-land. Ithaca (NY): ILR Press. |
[ 69 ] | Michels, R. 1959[1915]. Political parties. New York: Dover. |
[ 70 ] | Moore, W. E. 1962. The conduct of the corporation. New York: Random House. |
[ 71 ] | Narayan, K. 1993. “How native is a ‘native’ anthropologist?” American Anthropologist, 95, 671–686. |
[ 72 ] | Near, H. 1997. The kibbutz movement: A history. Vol. II - London: Littman Library. |
[ 73 ] | Nienaber, A-M., V. Holtorf, J. Leker and G. Schewe. 2015. “A climate of psychological safety enhances the success of front end teams”. International Journal of Innovation Management, 19, 1-34. |
[ 74 ] | Nilsson, J., A. Kihlén and L. Norell. 2009. “Are traditional cooperatives endangered species? About shrinking satisfaction, involvement and trust”. International Food and Agribusiness Review, 12, 103-123. |
[ 75 ] | Orr, J. E. 1996. Talking about machines. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press. |
[ 76 ] | O’Mahoney, Joseph K. 2005. “Trust, distrust and anxiety: The new manufacturing philosophy at Gearco”. Retrieved 17.8.2008: http://joeomahoney.googlepages.com/JOM_FinalPaper.doc |
[ 77 ] | O’Toole, J. 1999. Leadership from A to Z. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. |
[ 78 ] | Ouchi, W. G. 1981. Theory Z. Reading (MA): Addison-Wesley. |
[ 79 ] | Peter, L. J. and R. Hull. 1969. The Peter principle. London: Souvenier. |
[ 80 ] | Piff, K., D. M. Stancato, S. Cote, R. Mendoza-Denton and D. Keltner. 2012. “Higher social class predicts increased unethical behaviour”. Proceedings of the national academy of science. Retrieved 8.8.2013: www.pnas.org./cgi/doi/10.1073/1118373109. |
[ 81 ] | Poulin, B. J., M. Z. Hackman and C. Barbarasa-Mihai. 2007. “Leadership and succession: The challenge to succeed and the vortex of failure”. Leadership, 3, 301-324. |
[ 82 ] | Presthus, R. 1964. Man at the Top. New York: Oxford University Press. |
[ 83 ] | Riesman, D. 1950. The lonely crowd. New Haven (NJ): Yale University Press. |
[ 84 ] | Raelin, J. A. 2013. “The manager as facilitator of dialogue”. Organization, 20, 818-839. |
[ 85 ] | Roberts, J. 2013. “Organizational ignorance: Towards a managerial perspective on the unknown”. Management Learning, 44, 215-236. |
[ 86 ] | Russell, R. 1995. Utopia in Zion. Albany (NY): SUNY Press. |
[ 87 ] | Segal, D. R. 1981. “Leadership and management: Organizations theory”. In J. H. Buck and L. J. Korb (Eds.), Military leadership. Beverly Hills (CA): Sage, pp. 41-69. |
[ 88 ] | Semler, R. 1993. Maverick. New York: Warner. |
[ 89 ] | Shapira, R. 1978/9. “Autonomy of technostructure: An inter-kibbutz regional organization case study”. The kibbutz, 6/7, 276-303 (Hebrew). |
[ 90 ] | Shapira, R. 1987. Anatomy of mismanagment. Tel Aviv: Am Oved (Hebrew). |
[ 91 ] | Shapira, R. 1995a. “The voluntary resignation of outsider managers: Interkibbutz Rotation and Michels’s ‘Iron Law’”. Israel Social Science Research, 10, 59-84. |
[ 92 ] | Shapira, R. 1995b. “‘Fresh blood’ innovation and the dilemma of personal involvement”. Creativity and Innovation Management, 4, 86-99. |
[ 93 ] | Shapira, R. 2001. “Communal decline: The vanishing of high-moral leaders and the decay of democratic, high-trust kibbutz cultures”. Sociological Inquiry, 71, 13-38. |
[ 94 ] | Shapira, R. 2005. “Academic capital or scientific progress? A critique of the studies of kibbutz stratification”. Journal of Anthropological Research, 61, 357-380. |
[ 95 ] | Shapira, R. 2008. Transforming kibbutz research. Cleveland (OH): New World Publishing. |
[ 96 ] | Shapira, R. 2011. “Institutional combination for cooperative development: How trustful cultures and transformational mid-levellers overcame old guard conservatism”. In J. Blanc and D. Colongo (Eds.), Cooperatives contributions to a plural economy. Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 75-90. |
[ 97 ] | Shapira, R. 2012a. “High-trust culture, the decisive but elusive context of shared co-operative leaderships”. In J. Heiskanen, H. Henry et al. (Eds.), New opportunities for co-operatives: New opportunities for people. Mikkeli, Finland: University of Helsinki Press, pp. 154-167. |
[ 98 ] | Shapira, R. 2012b. “Becoming a triple stranger: Autoethnography of a kibbutznik’s long journey to discoveries of researchers’ faults”. In H. Hazan and E. Hertzog (Eds.), Serendipity in anthropological research: The nomadic turn. Farnham (UK): Ashgate Press, pp. 93-108. |
[ 99 ] | Shapira, R. 2013. “Leaders’ vulnerable involvement: Essential for trust, learning, effectiveness and innovation in co-operatives”. Journal of Co-Operative Organization and Management, 1, 15-26. |
[ 100 ] | Shapira, R. 2015a. “Dysfunctional outsider executives’ rule and the terra incognita of concealed managerial ignorance”. Open Journal of Leadership, 4, 12-29. |
[ 101 ] | Shapira, R. 2015b. “Prevalent concealed ignorance of low-moral careerist managers: Contextualization by a semi-native multi-site Strathernian ethnography”. Management Decision, 53, 1504-1526. |
[ 102 ] | Shapira, R. (In print). Mismanagement, “Jumping,” and Morality. New York: Routledge. |
[ 103 ] | Shotter, J. and H. Tsoukas. 2014. “Performing phronesis: On the way to engaged judgment”. Management Learning, 45, 377-396. |
[ 104 ] | Simon, H. 1957. Administrative behavior. New York: Free Press. |
[ 105 ] | Smithson, M. 1989. Ignorance and uncertainty. New York: Springer-Verlag. |
[ 106 ] | Starbuck, W. A. 2007. “Living in mythical spaces”. Organization Studies, 28, 21-25. |
[ 107 ] | Stryjan, Y. 1989. Impossible organizations. New York: Greenwood. |
[ 108 ] | Swidler, A. 2001. Talk of love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. |
[ 109 ] | Townley, B. 2002. “Managing with modernity”. Organization, 9, 549-573. |
[ 110 ] | Tzimkhi, N. (Ed.). 1999. Dan Tzimkhi. Kibbutz Dalia: Maarechet (Hebrew). |
[ 111 ] | Vald, E. 1987. The curse of the broken tools. Jerusalem: Schocken (Hebrew). |
[ 112 ] | Vancil, R. F. 1987. Passing the baton. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. |
[ 113 ] | Villette, M. and C. Vuillermot. 2009. From predators to icons. Ithaca: ILR Press. |
[ 114 ] | Washburn, K. K. 2011. “Elena Kagan and miracle at Harvard”. Journal of Legal Education, 61, 67-75. |
[ 115 ] | Weibel, A. 2007. “Formal control and trustworthiness: Shall the twin never meet?” Group Organization Management, 32, 500-517. |
[ 116 ] | Welker, M., D. J. Partridge and R. Hardin. 2011. “Corporate lives: New perspectives on the social life of the corporate form”. Current Anthropology, 52, S3-S15. |
[ 117 ] | Wexler, M. N. 2006. “Successful resume fraud: Conjectures on the origins of immorality in the workplace”. Journal of human values, 12, 137-152. |
[ 118 ] | Whyte, W. F. and K. K. Whyte. 1988. Making Mondragon. Ithaca (NY): ILR Press. |
[ 119 ] | Yanow, D. 2004. “Academic anthropologists in the organizational studies workplace”. Management learning, 35, 225-238. |
[ 120 ] | Zand, D. E. 1972. “Trust and managerial problem solving”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17, 229-239. |
[ 121 ] | Zbaracki, M. J. 1998. “The rhetoric and reality of total quality management”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 43, 602-633. |