Organisational sociopaths: rarely challenged, often promoted. Why?

Author(s): Richard J. Pech, Bret W. Slade
Journal: Society and Business Review
Year: 2007 Volume: 2 Issue:3 Page: 254-269

Purpose – Organisations sometimes select and promote the wrong individuals for managerial positions. These individuals may be incompetent, they may be manipulators and bullies. They are not the best people for the job and yet not only are they selected for positions of authority and responsibility, they are sometimes promoted repeatedly until their kind populate the highest levels of the organisational hierarchy. The purpose of this paper is to address this phenomenon by attempting to explain why it occurs and why organisational members tolerate such destructive practices. It concludes by proposing a cultural strategy to protect the organisation and its stakeholders from the ambitious machinations of the organisational sociopath.

...Research has identified numerous causes and explanations for managerial bullying, deceit, manipulation, and greed. This includes the existence of psychological traits such as narcissism, where managers misuse the organisation as a vehicle for furthering their own goals at the organisation's expense, using tactics such as manipulation and exploitation (Lasch, 1979). When such bullying behaviours occur without remorse, or goals of self gratification are pursued without consideration for the well-being of others, they can be termed as sociopathic behaviours. Surprisingly, and in apparent contradiction to every rational management principle, Kets de Vries (2003) points out that sociopathic managers often rise rapidly through the organisational ranks into positions of increasingly greater power.

Poor managerial performance has been explained with concepts such as the Peter Principle, where people are promoted one or more levels beyond their optimum level of competence (Peter and Hull, 1969). Performance shortfalls may be hidden by using bullying tactics. McGregor's (1960) Theory X and Y suggests that a manager's views of others may influence the manner in which people are managed. A negative view (Theory X) could mould a managerial style focusing on lower-order behaviours and thereby result in an overly authoritarian and task-centred management style. The job may still be accomplished but the method may unnecessarily antagonise intelligent, experienced, and qualified staff...

...These only represent a few explanations for poor performance and managerial shortcomings. Unnecessary and preventable poor managerial decisions continue to be made every day, and this may be because the wrong people are promoted into positions of authority and responsibility. Employees and stakeholders suffer because of the twisted machinations or greed of a few (Pech and Durden, 2004). Rather than filtering out such individuals and their destructive tendencies, Giblin (1981) suggests that the culture in the modern organisation actually rewards and reinforces such behaviours...

Davison and Neale (1998) define such behaviour as anti social, demonstrated through superficial displays of charm, habitual lying, no regard for others, no remorse, no shame, taking no responsibility for mistakes and no evidence of learning from either making mistakes or from punishment meted out for making mistakes (except to become more cunning in future, to avoid getting caught). The real dangers for the organisation reside at two levels. The first is the nature of the damage done to well-intended and performing individuals by sociopathic managers, and the second is the reinforcement and replication of these behaviours throughout the organisation by way of memetic contagion...

Unfortunately, the narcissists, the greedy, the pretenders, and those with a high need for power do covet higher managerial positions, largely to satisfy their power needs. They will either attempt to acquire power by conforming to the demands of the organisation's rituals and routines or they will attempt to gain power through illegitimate means. Both approaches provide pathways for achieving the individual's nefarious ambitions. Criteria for selecting a particular pathway will be dependent on the ambitious individual's values, determination, personality, and ability. The nature of the rituals and routines will also influence or impact on the decision criteria. The ambitious individual may not be prepared to leave promotion or career decisions in the hands of others, perhaps he or she is not capable of meeting expected performance standards, perhaps they fear the competition, or they may be driven to acquire power by any means. Such individuals may be driven to monopolise the organisational machinery and its rituals and routines to achieve need fulfilment and power ambitions. Employees who are not similarly motivated will have little chance or will find fewer opportunities for promotion when competing against the ambitious narcissists, the greedy, the pretenders, and those with a high need for power...

Can the sociopath be identified and stopped before it is too late? Probably not. According to Cleckley (1976) there are some overt signs that separate the sociopath from the rest. These include poverty of emotions, both positive and negative. They have no sense of shame and any emotions for others are often an act. They can be superficially charming but will manipulate for personal gain. They may not be motivated by money but rather through impulsive thoughts that fulfil their excessive need for thrills. Hare et al. (1990) devised a dual checklist that identifies clusters headed under “emotional detachment” and “impulsivity and irresponsibility”. The former can often be recognised through their inflated self-esteem and exploitation of others, while the latter may be marked by alcohol or drug abuse. Unfortunately, such symptoms may not become evident until the sociopath is already rising up the corporate ladder, and to some extent, almost everyone can be accused of displaying some of these symptoms some of the time. The organisational sociopath may also not display the extremes of pathological behaviours that are normally associated with the criminal psychopath and sociopath.

Short of forcing every managerial aspirant to take a battery of psychological assessments, pathological, predatory, or anti-social personalities may be difficult to identify and eliminate from the list of managerial contenders. Displaying behaviours oozing with wit, charm, audacity, and enthusiasm, they may stand out in the interview more for their attractive personal qualities than for their underlying destructive behaviours, which remain carefully concealed. While organisations must continue to employ a variety of sophisticated recruitment, selection, and promotion criteria and filters to ensure that the best people are selected and promoted, protection against exploitation by sociopaths requires much more. Giblin (1981) suggests that organisations be simplified, in other words, accountability must be increased, transparency must be improved, and performance must be quantifiable and appropriately rewarded. Even these measures may not deter the motivated sociopath...

...The organisation must examine its culture to identify the messages that are being transmitted. It must examine the complexity of its structure and procedures, and it must examine its recruitment, reward, and promotion policies to protect itself and its stakeholders against the destructive ambitions of the corporate sociopath.

Reforming further education: the changing labour process for college lecturers

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine how the labour process of further education lecturers has changed as a result of legislative reforms introduced in the early 1990s.

The authors: Kim Mather, University of Wolverhampton Business School, Wolverhampton, UK
Les Worrall, University of Wolverhampton Business School, Wolverhampton, UK
Roger Seifert, Keele University, Keele, UK

Personnel Review, 36, 1, 2007

...The application of market-based reforms in the FE sector, as in other parts of the public sector, has resulted in the intensification and extensification of work effort for lecturers on the front line. There are fewer lecturers who are working harder, working for longer and teaching more students: we have shown that they are struggling to cope with these increased workload demands. Our view is that this is a direct consequence of the particular nature of and, particularly, the ideological underpinning to the reform process that has sought to stimulate a state proxy for the capital accumulation imperative, through the introduction of competitive and market pressures in FE provision. Applying Braverman's logic in a highly labour intensive sector such as FE, we might expect to see labour management strategies designed to secure more for less from lecturing staff. Evidence of work intensification is clearly apparent in the three colleges we have examined and this echoes the findings drawn from research undertaken elsewhere in the FE sector and the public sector more generally.

Workers' responses suggest that there is resistance both at individual and collective level to these downward pressures though resistance does not seem to have been sufficiently strong to prevent the reported changes from occurring. Braverman (1974) was clear that under capitalism, work intensification increases the rate of exploitation of workers. He was also explicit about the long-term tendential nature of deskilling and the degradation of labour suggesting that short-term acts of resistance will be ineffective over the longer term. Lecturers in these colleges have been dispossessed of key job controls, which, when allied to trends in work intensification reported here, points to a degree of transformation in aspects of their labour process that may be directly linked to broader developments in the political economy of the Further Education sector specifically and the public sector more generally.

The research has revealed a number of key points all of which are consistent with Braverman's thesis. There is clear evidence that the public sector in the UK has changed dramatically with managerialist and consumerist notions having assumed ascendancy over those of the professions. The rise of a new managerial class in the public sector with its own rhetoric of performance management, targets, indicators, value for money, quality, productivity and flexibility has also been shown to have a world-view that has little in common with workers at the chalk face. We have provided clear evidence of deskilling in the form of the replacement of less flexible and more expensive full-time staff with more flexible and less expensive “things” (as one senior manager called them) and the increasing casualisation of working conditions.

We have also provided clear evidence of the redesign of work practices that have moved the lecturing profession away from a craft system of production where lecturers, as subject specialists, had more autonomy over what was taught, towards a factory system of production where standardisation in the form of modularisation has taken place and subject specialists are expected to teach outside their specialism simply to fill up their timetables in order to keep costs down. This we see as evidence that cost reduction criteria assume ascendancy over quality criteria despite the rhetoric of quality that currently pervades academic institutions in the UK. We argue that labour process theory has provided a powerful framework for the analysis of recent changes in the public sector as characterised by the growth of managerialism and the rise of the “new public management”. Despite the rhetoric of much contemporary management practice (“our employees are our greatest asset”), Taylorism and Fordism would seem to be “alive and well” in the UK public sector. It is unfortunate that many of the workers in the sector are not in a similar state of “good physical and psychological health”.

The mistreated teacher: a national study

Purpose – This study seeks to identify 172 American elementary, middle, and high school teachers' perceptions of the major sources and intensity of the experience of mistreatment by a principal, the effects of such mistreatment, how these perceptions varied by demographic variables, teachers' coping skills, and teachers' perceptions of contributing factors.

The authors: Joseph Blase, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
Jo Blase, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
Fengning Du, Defense Language Institute, Monterey, California, USA

...With respect to teachers, several large-scale international studies of workplace mistreatment/abuse across occupations in Great Britain (Hoel and Cooper, 2000), Sweden (Leymann, 1992b), Norway (Matthiesen et al., 1989), Ireland (Irish Taskforce on the Prevention of Workplace Bullying, 2001), and Australia (Queensland Government Workplace Bullying Taskforce, 2002) indicate that public school teachers are among the high- risk occupations for mistreatment/abuse. In fact, one of the most prominent web sites in the world devoted to workplace mistreatment (www.bullybusters.org) has reported that teachers were among the largest group of abused workers, and another high-profile web site (www.bullyonline.org) reported that teachers were the largest group of enquirers and callers. Recently, the National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse (NAPTA) launched a web site (www.endteacherabuse.org) devoted to addressing the specific problem of teacher abuse...

Effects of abuse

A great deal of research has emphasized the deleterious effects of abusive workplace conduct on a victim's psychological-emotional health, physical-physiological health, work performance and relationships with coworkers, and personal life. Examples of negative effects on psychological-emotional health that appear in the research literature include the following: reduced job satisfaction, negative feelings (e.g., desperation, incompetence, inadequacy, embarrassment, guilt, shame, self-doubt, loneliness, powerlessness), loss of concentration, obsessive thinking and intrusive thoughts, distrust, cynicism, anxiety, emotional exhaustion, compulsivity, burnout, disorientation, shock, chronic fear, sociophobia, panic attacks, hypervigilance, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, suicidal thoughts, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Negative effects of mistreatment/abuse on physical-physiological health include hair loss, back and neck pain, headaches and migraines, skin disorders, racing heart rate, loss of strength, significant weight changes (loss or gain), ulcers, chest pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, high blood pressure, angina, irritable bowel syndrome, TMJ, heart arrhythmia, and heart attacks. Negative effects on work performance and relationships with coworkers revealed by research include work impairment (i.e. decreases in initiative, creativity, risk taking, commitment, concentration, effort, work time, ability to do job), distrust, tardiness, absenteeism, voluntary attrition, stress and strain, job mistakes, sabotage, social withdrawal, isolation from colleagues, deterioration of relationships, impaired individual and group decision making, thoughts of quitting, change of career goals, withdrawal from extra-role and social involvements, and deterioration of quality of relationships with clients. Effects on family and personal life include increases in family conflict and deterioration of relationships among family members, and loss of friendships...

Stress is considered an interactional phenomenon; it is a function of perceived situational demands and an individual's perceived ability to cope with such demands. Stress and strain result from a perceived imbalance between situational demands and perceived coping abilities. When individual coping proves to be ineffective and exposure to stressors prolonged, structural and functional damage to an individual can be expected (Cox, 1978). Keashly (1998, 2001) argued that because of relative power differences, mistreatment/abuse by a superior will tend to significantly undermine a victim's coping abilities. To wit, a limited number of studies have investigated victims' coping responses to abusive superiors. In general, such studies indicate that direct action by a victim (e.g., reporting an abuser to a superior or a union) resulted in no response, efforts to protect the abuser, or reprisals against the victim...

Effects of principal mistreatment

The ten most frequently reported effects on teachers participating in our survey were (in rank order) as follows: stress (90.7 percent of participants), resentment (80.8 percent), anger (75 percent), insecurity (70.3 percent), a sense of injustice and moral outrage (70.3 percent), self-doubt (68 percent), anxiety (65.7 percent), sense of powerlessness (64.5 percent), maintenance of silence (64 percent), and bitterness (64 percent) (see Table II). The least frequently reported effects of principal mistreatment were use of alcohol (14.5 percent of the participants), worsened allergies or asthma (14 percent), smoking (12.2 percent), ulcers (3.5 percent), use of illegal drugs (1.7 percent), and PTSD (0 percent).

With regard to teaching, participants were asked, “Overall, how much did your principal's mistreatment undermine your effectiveness as a teacher”: 4.1 percent of the teachers responded not at all, 18.6 percent responded minimally, and 27.3 percent, 28.5 percent, and 21.5 percent responded moderately, significantly, and severely, respectively. In short, 77.3 percent indicated that principal mistreatment markedly undermined teaching...

Losing one's career

Zapf and Gross (2001) found that victims of long-term bullying advised others to leave their place of employment more often (22 percent) than they advised any other coping strategy. The Irish Taskforce on the Prevention of Workplace Bullying (2001) reported that 11 percent of those who recently had been bullied quit their jobs, and 14 percent indicated that they had considered withdrawing from the labor force completely. Furthermore, The External Advisory Committee on the Defence Forces (2002) found that 51 percent of mistreated victims had applied for a transfer or thought about leaving their jobs. Similarly, in our current study of teachers, slightly over half of the participants indicated that principal mistreatment was so harmful that they were unable to cope, and over three-quarters (76.7 percent) reported that they would leave their teaching positions because of the harm caused by their principal's mistreatment. Even more alarming, we found that half (49.4 percent) of the teachers we studied “wanted to leave teaching altogether” because of their mistreatment. This astounding percentage of teachers willing to relinquish their chosen careers, clearly a “last resort” coping strategy, underscores the overwhelming deleterious effects of principal mistreatment on teachers and teaching; this is particularly ominous in light of current and predicted teacher shortages...

Workplace bullying is a problem that cannot simply be denied

The reactions by Bill McGregor of the Headteachers' Association, John Stodter of the Directors of Education and Cosla's spokesman to the suggestion that bullying is "endemic" within six local authorities make interesting reading (The Herald, May 16). They seem to deny it is a problem on their own patches. Just a small review of existing evidence might be helpful.

Two years ago, Amicus and the DTI funded a national project that addressed the serious issue of bullying in the workplace, in which it estimated the cost to UK employers as more than £2bn a year in sick pay, staff turnover and loss of production. One in 10 employees said they had been bullied. Stress-related illness and absence levels in education were substantially above the national average.

In a recent study by Glamorgan University, it was found that nearly 80% of teachers had been bullied in the past two years, with many telling researchers that the problem was continuing and they were regularly bullied. Many said members of their school's senior management team were either the bullies or allowed bullying by others to continue, causing some teachers to think about leaving their posts or abandoning their careers altogether.

Nearly one in 12 staff working in the NHS has experienced bullying or harassment by their manager, according to Westminster figures. An official survey of doctors, nurses and administrators showed the scale of the culture of bullying that had to be tackled by hospitals and primary care trusts.

November 7, 2007, was Ban Bullying at Work Day - a message that doesn't appear to have got through to all parts of further and higher education. Academics at Leeds Metropolitan University claimed that 42% felt intimidated at work, 37% felt their work was belittled and 24% felt they had been humiliated by bullying. The University and College Union survey (with a 41% response rate) suggested a management culture at odds with the university's goals of challenging received wisdom, encouraging students to think and promoting collaborative inquiry. Some 96% of respondents said they felt inhibited about positively criticising policies and 63% reported witnessing bullying.

Denying the nature and existence of the problem without having proper evidence is not only to demean, insult and possibly harm those who have suffered; it is to sustain the corporate, structural and institutionalised hands (and voices) that guide a failure to properly address the matter. There is much evidence on our files to deny that substantial claims of bullying are "groundless", as Cosla suggests. This is a legislated Health and Safety at work issue. What is desperately required is for the Scottish Government at least to commission root-and-branch departmental research of workplace bullying so the truth can emerge and be properly inspected - and this is before tackling that which so much evidence suggests is equally endemic in the private sector.

From: http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/letters

Disgraceful events at Nottingham University

CAFAS - Council for Academic Freedom & Academic Standards - 7 Benn Street, London E9 FSU

29 May

The Home Secretary
Home Office
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF


Dear Home Secretary

You are no doubt aware that a member of the staff of the University of Nottingham, Hicham Yezza, who has resided and worked in the UK for the last thirteen years, is currently under threat of almost immediate deportation.

Mr Yezza has found himself in this predicament as a consequence of having helped a postgraduate student, Rizwaan Sabir, who asked him to print a copy of an al-Quaida document that Mr Sabir had downloaded from a US military website in the public domain. Mr Sabir’s academic supervisors confirm that the document in question is directly relevant to his research. Both men were initially arrested in connection with this document, but subsequently freed without charge. But Mr Yezza was rearrested on grounds related to his immigration status, and now faces deportation.

CAFAS takes the view that the original arrest and detention of these members of the University was unwarranted. We accept that, in the current climate of opinion, the police may well have had concerns about Mr Sabir’s interest in the al-Quaida document, and the assistance Mr Yezza gave him. But these concerns could surely have been quickly resolved, without breaching the principle of academic freedom, simply by consulting the academic staff in charge of the research in question.

We are not in a position to evaluate the immigration problems Mr Yezza is now said to face. But it is clear that these problems have surfaced solely as a consequence of the involvement of the police in Mr Sabir’s academic research, the legitimacy of which is seemingly no longer challenged.

In the circumstances, we think it absolutely vital that Mr Yezza be provided with a proper opportunity to prepare his defence and to have his case impartially examined by the Courts. To deport him without his being allowed this opportunity to defend himself would be patently unjust. We therefore urge you to delay deportation long enough for this process to take its course.

If you do not feel able to do this, I should be grateful if you would explain why, so that I may circulate your explanation to our members in UK universities.

Yours sincerely

Geraldine Thorpe
Assistant Co-ordinator, CAFAS

Cc Liam Byrne, MP

Tips for handling power

In her book 'Bad Leadership', Barbara Kellerman suggests some tips for those in power, to help them avoid turning bad. These include:

• Limit your tenure. When leaders remain in power for too long, they tend to acquire bad habits
• Share power. When power is centralised, it is likely to be misused, and that puts a premium on delegation and collaboration
• Get real, and stay real. Virtually every bad leader loses touch with reality somehow
• Know and control your appetites. These include the hunger for power, money, success and sex
• Be reflective. Virtually every one of the great writers on leadership emphasises the importance of self knowledge, self control and good habits. Acquiring such virtues is hard. Intent is required, but so is time for quiet contemplation
• Encourage a culture of openness in which diversity and dissent are encouraged
• Bring in advisers who are strong and independent
• Avoid groupthink. Groupthink discourages healthy dissent and encourages excessive cohesiveness
• Establish a system of checks and balances

From: http://www.trainingzone.co.uk

Lincoln acts to lift morale of discontented staff

The University of Lincoln is implementing an action plan to improve staff morale after an internal survey revealed that only 49 per cent of respondents felt "valued" by the university.

The survey, which polled more than 800 employees, 64 per cent of staff, was undertaken at the end of last year. The results were published in the current issue of the University of Lincoln magazine Contact. The poll suggests that staff believe the university falls short on managing change, communication, reducing bureaucracy and offering career progression.

Of those surveyed, 86 per cent said they felt more could be done to help them "prepare for and cope with change" and 57 per cent felt they were "required to do unimportant tasks which prevent them from completing more important ones". On the subject of career advancement, 59 per cent said that there were not enough opportunities for progression in the university.

The action plan, drawn up in response to the results, includes developing a communications plan for major changes, a framework for staff development and promotion and "less use of paper/memos and more face-to-face and telephone contact".

"When the staff survey was conducted, we were halfway through the appraisal year and only 57 per cent of staff surveyed had had their appraisal," said Jayne Billam, the university's director of human resources. "This can lead to staff not feeling valued."

"Now up to 90 per cent of people have been appraised. We had the highest level of staff engagement for our staff survey ... (and) the largest response in the sector compared to the other 32 HEIs surveyed by the independent survey specialist Capita," Ms Billam said. "The survey also showed positive results, with 83 per cent (of respondents) saying that the university was a good place to work."

From: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk

...and who is this man...

... an under-qualified arrogant professor nicknamed "Nick the Prick"...

Lame duck HEFCE...

So what do we have here? Students were asked to beef up their ratings of Kingston University. The whole issue became national news and placed a huge question mark on the reliability of the student satisfaction survey. Kingston University - a serial offender when it comes to workplace bullying - is off the hook because the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE, read: taxpayer's money) declares that it is 'in discussion with the institution about the allegation'... Excuse me, but it is not an allegation - there is an actual recording of the event. HEFCE is also in discussion with Kingston University about appropriate 'next steps'. Don't worry HEFCE because Kingston University have taken steps to ban students from recording similar incidents...

Who is this man?