Hypocrisy and Stupidity in Organizations

Lecture 13

Key concepts

Hypocrisy - The incongruence between talk/decisions and action. So the difference between what is
decided or communicated and what is actually done. This is always tied to an actor 
 
Functional stupidity - The term describes how actors sometimes act without reflection or reasoning,
but by doing so can be more productive. 

Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations

Stupidity is prevalent in present day organizations

Decision-making in organizations:
- Can be a rational process
o Subject to bounded rationality  actor’s inability to make completely rational
decisions due to lack of time, information and information processing capacity
- Can be described as being stupid
o Behavior rarely remains hidden because of its rather obvious negative consequences
for the organization

Functional stupidity = “organizationally supported lack of reflexivity, substantive reasoning, and

justification”
- Amounts to the “refusal to use intellectual resource outside a narrow and safe terrain”
 it has nothing to do with ignorance, carelessness or lack of thought

Functional stupidity is a manifestation of people’s unwillingness to consider or think about

solutions that lie outside the arbitrary boundary
- “business as usual” scenarios  hard to detect in an organization
- When certain topics are explicitly deemed as being out of bounds for discussion

Elements to functional stupidity:

1. Lack of reflexivity = inability of unwillingness to question claims and commonly accepted
wisdom
o Loyalty, chain of command
2. Lack of substantive reasoning = reasoning based on a small set of concerns that do not span
the whole issue
o When organizations focus their efforts on achieving certain objectives with little or
no questioning of the objectives themselves
3. Lack of justification = when employees do not question managers, or do not provide
explanations regarding their own actions
o Consequence of power relations in organizations

Pros of functional stupidity

 - When certain topics are out of bound  organizations can avoid discussions about
potentially controversial topics and thus keep conflict and certainty at bay
- Maintains harmony
- Strengthens the existing organizational order which in turn serves to reinforce functional
stupidity
Positive consequences:
- Provides a sense of certainty that allows organizations to function smoothly.
- Saves the organization from the frictions provoked by doubt and reflection.
- Contributes to maintaining and strengthening organizational order.
- Can motivate people, help them to cultivate their careers, and subordinate them to socially
acceptable forms of management and leadership.

Cons of functional stupidity

- Prevents organizations from finding solutions to issues that involve topics that have been
arbitrarily deemed as being out of bounds
Negative consequences:
- Decreased autonomy and organizational mistakes.
- Trapping individuals and organizations into problematic patterns of thinking, which
engender the conditions for individual and organizational dissonance.

Examples:

“That’s just the way things are done around here” or “business as usual”

 Phrases used to label practices that are ritually applied without much thought or reflection
 Practices remain unremarked because it is not easy to link them to negative outcomes

Author points out:

“most managerial practices are adopted on the basis of faulty reasoning, accepted wisdom and
complete lack of evidence”

 Companies adopt HR practices that are detrimental to employee and organizational wellbeing

Cause of stupidity within organizations

Root cause  organization’s attempt to short-circuit critical thinking through what they call
economies of persuasion
- Activities such as corporate culture initiatives, leadership training or team/identity building,
relabeling positions with pretentious titles
o Activities aimed at influencing employees through the use of symbols and images
rather than substance

Stupidity is not just a cognitive issue:

 Emotional aspect: Anxiety at work and personal insecurity may reinforce functional
stupidity. Reflexivity, critical questioning and engaging with difficult questions can be
anxiety-provoking and put ones’ identity into question.
  Motivational aspect: An unwillingness to use one’s cognitive capacities. A lack of
curiosity, closed-mindedness and an identity construction as an ‘organizational person’ or a
‘professional’ (who is inclined to see the organizational paradigm as unquestionable), can be
a very important barrier to broader thinking.

Symbolic manipulation
- Increase employee’s sense of commitment to the organization
- “seeking to shape the mind-set of employees”
- Employee’s buy in to such efforts and thereby identify with the organization
- Makes employees uncritical of the organization’s goals

This ‘symbolic manipulation’ is not just directed at customers, but also the firms employees:
Culture initiatives, spirituality in the workplace, linking work to the pursuit of the social good,
impressive titles etc.
 Efforts to persuade and seduce employees into believing in something that improves the
image of their organizations, their work and, ultimately, themselves. Indicates appropriate
feelings, convictions, and identities.

Stupidity management  managerial actions that prevent/discourage organizational actors from

thinking for themselves
- Attempts to limit the fully shared exercise of employees’ cognitive capacities.
- Achieved through reinforcement of positive images of the organization

Blocking of communicative action: Systematically distorted communication that prevents the

emergence of dialogues that allow validity claims to be questioned. The search for good reasons for
accepting a truth or normative claim is cut short.
 
Emphasis on positive understandings of the organization: Focus on uplifting messages such as
organizational visions, missions, values, and strategies that promise an impressive, up-beat, and
identity-confirming organizational world. Independent, critical thinking is discouraged

Effect of managerial actions that encourage stupidity:

- Employees start to cast aside their own doubts and questions --> behave in corporately
acceptable ways
- They perform their jobs in an unreflective and unquestioning way
- Employees stop questioning what they are asked to do, and just do it
- Doubts fade and this becomes the accepted way of working

Consequence: “that’s just the way things are done around here”

The paradoxes and consequences of stupidity

 
Functional stupidity --> cause feelings of certainty and dissonance in members of an organization
- Suppressing critical thinking --> easy acceptance of the way things are
 
Those who act in line with the organizational goals/values --> likely to be offered rewards and
promotions than those who don't
- Reinforces functional stupidity --> others will be tempted to behave in a similar fashion
 
Can also result in serious negative consequences for the organization
 
Stupidity management may have beneficial outcomes in the short run, but there is a price to pay in
the long run
- Employees will see the contradictions between the real organization and the one they were
asked to believe in --> result in alienation and cynicism about the organization and its
objectives

Conclusion
 
Main message --> despite the general belief that organizations enlist the cognitive and intellectual
capacities of their members in positive ways, the truth is that organizational behavior often exhibit a
willful ignorance of facts and/or lack of logic
--> Functional stupidity
 
Advantages --> maintaining harmony in the short term
Consequences --> functional stupidity acts as a barrier that can stop members of an organization
from developing potentially interesting perspectives on the problems the organizations face

--> The term ‘functional’ implies how stupidity can be helpful in producing results for both organizations
and individuals, whereas the term ‘stupidity’ implies the risks and problems involved.

Organized Hypocrisy

--> Hypocracy is a discrepancy between talk, decisions and action

Hypocrisy is generally a problem, as actors should be consistent in what they say, decide and do
- Implementation problem --> when organizations do not execute the visions stated or the
decisions made

However, sometimes hypocrisy can be a solution --> can be seen as morally valuable

Hypocrisy is a response to a world with conflict

 
To satisfy one demand fully may be to satisfy poorly another --> because people have differing
ideas of how organizations should work
 
Modern organizations --> pretend they can satisfy a series of conflicting demands
- It is not easy for a company or state to satisfy all demands --> success in one dimension
often decreases success in another

Hypocrisy is a way of handling conflicts by reflecting them in inconsistencies among talk, decisions
and actions
- An organization can meet some demands through decisions, some through talk and some
through action
o Becomes difficult to act consistently with what is said/decided
hypocrisy is a solution = it makes it easier to act forcefully in one direction, even with a number of
opponents.
- Becomes easier to say controversial things and to make controversial decisions
 
Without hypocrisy --> one party would be completely satisfied or completely dissatisfied
- Strong dissatisfaction would be more common
With hypocrisy --> several parties and interest can be somewhat satisfied

 Can arise as an answer to conflict

 Can arise as a result of conflict

Hypocrisy is one of many ways of handling conflicts among groups

 As long as people care about what is said and what is decided upon, their interests can be met
through talk and decisions

Further way of resolving conflict --> satisfy all need simultaneously by either talk or decisions
- Easier to satisfy conflicting demands by talk and decision-making than by actions
--> lead to some hypocrisy --> can be difficult to act according to talk and decisions made in
organizations

Conflict over time

 
--> different demands are made on the organizations at different times
--> organization cannot keep up
--> demands can only be handled if followed by hypocrisy
--> organization adapts talk and decisions quick enough to reflect new demands, but not slow
enough to reflect its actions

Hypocrisy becomes a way of handling situations when what is said cannot be done and when what
is done cannot be talked about
- Hypocrisy means that we can continue to talk about things than can be talked about and do
things that can be done

Meta-Hypocrisy

Norm in society --> idea that talk, decisions and actions should be consistent --> should not engage
in hypocrisy
 
Actors can become discredited
- Organizations can be accused of not being a coordinated unit
 
Hypocrisy works for materialists only if they do not believe in hypocrisy
- Therefor important to convince materialists that the organization is one actor and that there
is no hypocrisy
o That the only function is to create the corresponding action
--> higher level of hypocrisy = meta-hypocrisy --> that a hypocritical organization is not a hypocrite
- One continues to be hypocrite but one claims that one is not
 o An organization is presented as being consistent with regards to what is said, decided
and done, but in practice this is not the case

--> Hypocrisy is not necessarily a bad thing:

 You can satisfy more people
 We need ideals to strive towards
o We need the discrepancy between what we say and what we do to have morals

Why hypocrisy works

 
Idealists: Organizational talk and decisions are important in themselves. It is important to ‘send the
right message’.
 Susceptible to hypocrisy because they consider their interests and values at least partly
satisfied through what is said and decided.
 
Materialists: What matters is what is actually done.
 Traditional: There is a somewhat causal connection between talk, decision and actions
o Susceptible to hypocrisy because they believe that talk and decisions will lead to
actions.
 Cynical: There is no (or perhaps a reverse) causal connection between talk decisions and
actions
o Not susceptible to hypocrisy. If everyone were cynical materialists, hypocrisy would
not work.