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.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop an explanatory framework by attempting to combine elements of the theory of memetics with structuration theory. Memetic theory helps to analyse culture and communication of beliefs, ideas, and thoughts. Structuration theory can be used to identify motives and drives. A combination of these theoretical approaches can be used to identify the motives of organisational sociopaths. Such a tool is also useful for exploring the high level of organisation tolerance for sociopathic managers.
Findings – Organisational tolerance and acceptance for sociopathic managerial behaviour appears to be a consequence of cultural and structural complexity. While this has been known for some time, few authors have posited an adequate range of explanations and solutions to protect stakeholders and prevent the sociopath from exploiting organisational weaknesses. Reduction of cultural and structural complexity may provide a partial solution. Transparency, communication of strong ethical values, promotion based on performance, directed cooperation, and rewards that reinforce high performing and acceptable behaviour are all necessary to protect against individuals with sociopathic tendencies.
Originality/value – The authors provide a new cultural diagnostic tool by combining elements of memetic theory with elements of structuration theory. The subsequent framework can be used to protect organisations from becoming the unwitting victims of sociopaths seeking to realise and fulfil their needs and ambitions through a managerial career path.
...
[the paper contains a graphic diagram showing feedback loops reinforcing sociopathic organizational tendencies that people have called the "chart of evil"]
I have been in public higher ed for a decade; this was spot on. I am currently planning my escape plan, hoping to exit sometime within the next few years. Every semester that clicks over I feel more and more that I am polishing the brass on the Titanic. The greed, the abuse, the careerism, the institutional apartheid between the Tenured brahmins and the adjunct sudras, the abusive workloads, the lowering standards, the cancer and distraction that is DEI, the Title IX kangaroo courts, the woke union -- it will all bring the largest public university system to its knees. I hope something better rises from its ashes.
Does anyone in Wesley Yang's substack community know of the earliest evidence of the strategy of organizations on the left to carefully and methodically persuade Americans that the movement for LGBTQ+ rights (and all other groups deemed marginalized today) is equivalent to the Civil Rights Movement and thus to inherit or appropriate the goodwill most Americans feel toward the Civil Rights movement? Maybe something that exposes that they knew this was a tendentious argument but where they were nonetheless public about that and pointed out it would be rhetorically effective.
I vaguely remember that there may have been some publicized internal documents from major LGBTQ advocacy organizations detailing such a strategy as far back as 2014. I feel like Wesley has discussed this topic surely or maybe I've heard it more concretely somewhere else?
Captures the meaninglessness, bureaucracy, greed, depraved, empty hunger for power, narcissism and sociopathy of (corrupt) higher education perfectly.
Not just higher education. I recognized much that was familiar from a long career in big corporate.
re: chart of evil [page 257]
Yep, but the OP is about higher education.
Here is one way of thinking about the general problem of organizational dysfunction:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242338489_Organisational_sociopaths_Rarely_challenged_often_promoted_Why
excerpt:
Abstract
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.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop an explanatory framework by attempting to combine elements of the theory of memetics with structuration theory. Memetic theory helps to analyse culture and communication of beliefs, ideas, and thoughts. Structuration theory can be used to identify motives and drives. A combination of these theoretical approaches can be used to identify the motives of organisational sociopaths. Such a tool is also useful for exploring the high level of organisation tolerance for sociopathic managers.
Findings – Organisational tolerance and acceptance for sociopathic managerial behaviour appears to be a consequence of cultural and structural complexity. While this has been known for some time, few authors have posited an adequate range of explanations and solutions to protect stakeholders and prevent the sociopath from exploiting organisational weaknesses. Reduction of cultural and structural complexity may provide a partial solution. Transparency, communication of strong ethical values, promotion based on performance, directed cooperation, and rewards that reinforce high performing and acceptable behaviour are all necessary to protect against individuals with sociopathic tendencies.
Originality/value – The authors provide a new cultural diagnostic tool by combining elements of memetic theory with elements of structuration theory. The subsequent framework can be used to protect organisations from becoming the unwitting victims of sociopaths seeking to realise and fulfil their needs and ambitions through a managerial career path.
...
[the paper contains a graphic diagram showing feedback loops reinforcing sociopathic organizational tendencies that people have called the "chart of evil"]
This explains why the humanities have moved to YouTube and Substack, while all the action in hard sciences occurs in startups.
Best essay I've read in a very long time about the bleakness at the very foundation of academic life during the 2010s.
I have been in public higher ed for a decade; this was spot on. I am currently planning my escape plan, hoping to exit sometime within the next few years. Every semester that clicks over I feel more and more that I am polishing the brass on the Titanic. The greed, the abuse, the careerism, the institutional apartheid between the Tenured brahmins and the adjunct sudras, the abusive workloads, the lowering standards, the cancer and distraction that is DEI, the Title IX kangaroo courts, the woke union -- it will all bring the largest public university system to its knees. I hope something better rises from its ashes.
Both strands of the story are so sad. In different ways. Kathy’s was tragic.
Heartbreaking story.
A similar tale though it’s Slate, so who knows:
https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/education/2013/11/death_of_duquesne_adjunct_margaret_mary_vojtko_what_really_happened_to_her.html
Does anyone in Wesley Yang's substack community know of the earliest evidence of the strategy of organizations on the left to carefully and methodically persuade Americans that the movement for LGBTQ+ rights (and all other groups deemed marginalized today) is equivalent to the Civil Rights Movement and thus to inherit or appropriate the goodwill most Americans feel toward the Civil Rights movement? Maybe something that exposes that they knew this was a tendentious argument but where they were nonetheless public about that and pointed out it would be rhetorically effective.
I vaguely remember that there may have been some publicized internal documents from major LGBTQ advocacy organizations detailing such a strategy as far back as 2014. I feel like Wesley has discussed this topic surely or maybe I've heard it more concretely somewhere else?
Maybe look up stuff on yogykarta principles and civil rights?
But it's definitely a thing
It will be a long time before I forget this story.