Corporate sin
Subtitle: leaderless leadership & dissonant workers
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Bloomington, IN
Language: eng
Number of pages: 228
Subjects: Psychology of Work, Industrial Psychology, Organizational Devlelopment (OD), Cultural Psychology, Management Psychology, Industrial Sociology
Genres: Organization-Industrial Psychology
Work titles: Nonfiction
First sentence: Soren Kierkegaard, so the story goes, once had a large bundle of laundry, bracing himself to carry it through the streets of Copenhagen, searching desperately for a cleaning establishment.  Finally, he saw a shop window displaying several signs, among them was one in bold leters.  "Laundry done here!"  With great relief, he pushed his way through the door and dumped his load on the counter, only to register confusion on the part of the storeowner.  "You do do laundry here?" Kierkegaard asked.  The store owner shook his head, "No, dear sir, we don't.  We make signs."
Description: Leadership is in a state of retreat bordering on confusion.  Not only is leadership out-of-date, but out-of-touch with the reality of work, workers and the marketplace.  Organizational culture is key to enterprise.  It follows this precise formula:

(1) The structure of work determines the function of work;
(2) The function of work creates the workplace culture;
(3) The workplace culture dictates the dominant organizational behavior;
(4) The dominant organizational behavior determines organizational success or failure.

Moreover, there are three possible types of cultures that provide a clue as to the healthiness of the organization:

(1) CULTURE OF COMFORT.  This culture may be labeled "unconscious incompetence," because it was not aware that something was wrong.  It has a paternalistic management style, where managers act as parents to workers.  These workers have a  "please other" reactive mentality, that is, reacting to demands rather than anticipating work requirments.  Workers act as if obedient 12-year-olds in 50-year-old bodies.  This management dependence has dominated American enterprise for the past sixty years.

(2) CULTURE OF COMPLACENCY.  This culture is labeled "consciously incompetence" because interventions have been launched to increase worker loyalty and productivity through entitlement programs, incentives and concessions.  These interventions have proven counterproductive leading to a state of permissive paternalism.  This has resulted in workers being counterdependent on the company for their total well being.  It has also given birth to the worker as spoiled child, suspended in terminal adolescence and arrested development.  All attempts to change the culture lie outside the individual worker.  This culture has come to dominate late 20th century companies, leading to strained competitive status, notably in the automotive industry.

(3) CULTURE OF CONTRIBUTION.  This is labed the culture of "conscious competence," as it promotes interdependent management.  Workers and managers are partners in enterprise in an open system of exchange of ideas and information.  Maturity is the byword.  This culture is a self-organizing system of self-management and self-direction workers who make timely decisions at the level of consequences.  It is not a climate of harmony but contention where conflict, confrontation and disagreement are common.  The difference is that these natural tensions are managed producing the glue that holds the organization together and on task.  

Most organizations subscribed to the Culture of Contribution but do not practice its dictums.  The route to cooperation is a challenging one:

(1) POLITENESS STAGE.  We are nice to each other because we want others to think well of us.
(2) SUSPICIOUS STAGE.  To protect ourselves from what we don't know or understand, we pass what is said or demanded of us through the filter of our suspicions.
(3) FIGHT, FLIGHT, or ADAPT STAGE.  We question what is expected of us, and why, and what our role is going to be in the activity.  We fight for our rights, for what is coming to us.  Or we take flight, adapt, submit and surrender, and go along to get along.
(4) COOPERATION and OPEN COMMUNICATION STAGE.  Our concerns have been addressed and met.  We have spoken and been heard, and our fears have been allayed.  We are ready for trust and collaboration.

When stages (2) and (3) are avoided, the result is compliance not cooperation.  Compliance is coercive; cooperation is voluntary.  With compliance, a worker brings his body to work but not necessarily his mind.  With cooperation, a worker brings his total self to the effort because it comes from within; it is  not demanded from without.
Notes: The current state of corporate culture is the wrong for the wrong time.  Consequently, it has led to sins of commission and omission not only by the leadership but by the workers as well.  Conceivably, it could be said with some justification, how could it be otherwise?  Corpocracy has run out of steam and out of options.  It lingers on anachronistically while its leadership becomes increasingly atavistic.  It is a formula for disaster, and unfortunately, that has been the case in far too many instances.  Rather than address the problems of the collapsing hierarchy, and the failure to act expeditiously and strategically, there are too many fat cats who would like it to continue, "as it is," as long as possible.  No matter how many times the roof falls in; no matter how many times managers and workers are suffocating under the debris, the dance is always the same: (1) restructure; (2) downside; (3) reengineer; (4) merge; (5) relocate; or (6) conduct another redundancy exercise.  A corporation’s market share can shrink, its operation move into unprofitable status, its stock price on Wall Street can plummet, but if corporate executives conduct one or more of these interventions, "and save the company money," they are likely to receive healthy bonuses.  It is an insanity that has reached normalcy.  The unintended consequences of this lopsided rationale has led to "corporate sin" through leaderless leadership, which has killed the spirit of workers, who have in turn become dissident.  It is why CORPORATE SIN was written.
Table of contents: label: Chapter One
title: Leaderless Leadership in a Society Without a Moral Compass
pagenum: 3; label: Chapter Eleven
title: Mature Adult Workers: The Please-Self Mentality
pagenum: 157