You know what’s cool? When you start to read an article by a famous writer and he quotes you. That’s what happened this morning. I guess my commute won’t be so bad today.
[Another re-run. Regularly scheduled blogging will resume once I’ve sailed far enough down the coast. Homework assignment: read this article and apply the concepts within it to the Obama administration’s policies on Ukraine and Syria.]
Is it morning in America again, or is the bubble that is the American economy about to pop (again), this time perhaps tipping it into full-blown collapse in five stages with symphonic accompaniment and fireworks? A country blowing itself up is quite a sight to behold, and it makes us wonder about lots of things. For instance, it makes us wonder whether the people who are doing the blowing up happen to be criminals. (Sure, they may be in a manner of speaking—as a moral judgment passed on the powerful by the powerless—but since none of them are likely to see the inside of a jail cell or even a courtroom any time soon, the point is moot. Let’s be sure to hunt them down once they try to run and hide, though.) But at a much more basic and fundamental level, a better question to ask is this one:
“Why are we being so fucking stupid?”
What do I mean when I use the term “fucking stupid”? I do not mean it as a term of abuse but as a precise, if unflattering, diagnosis. Here is as good a definition as any, excerpted from American Eulogy by Jim Quinn:
But nowhere did I find a principled, rigorous explanation for the fatal flaw embedded in the very nature of hierarchical systems. I did have a very strong hunch, though, backed by much anecdotal evidence, that it comes down to stupidity. In anarchic societies whose members cooperate freely, intelligence is additive; in hierarchical organizations structured around a chain of command, intelligence is subtractive. The lowest grunts or peons are expected to carry out orders unquestioningly. Their critical faculties are 100% impaired; if not, they are subjected to disciplinary action. The supreme chief executive officer may be of moderately impaired intelligence, since it is indicative of a significant character flaw to want such a job in the first place. (Kurt Vonnegut put it best: “Only nut cases want to be president.”) But beyond that, the supreme leader must act in such a way as to keep the grunts and peons in line, resulting in further intellectual impairment, which is compounded across all of the intervening ranks, with each link in the chain of command contributing a bit of its own stupidity to the organizational stupidity stack.
I never ascended the ranks of middle management, probably due to my tendency to speak out at meetings and throw around terms such as “nonsensical,” “idiotic,” “brainless,” “self-defeating” and “fucking stupid.” If shushed up by superiors, I would resort to cracking jokes, which were funny and even harder to ignore. Neither my critical faculties, nor my sense of humor, are easily repressed. I was thrown at a lot of special projects where the upside of being able to think independently was not negated by the downside of being unwilling to follow (stupid) orders. To me hierarchy = stupidity in an apparent, palpable way. But in explaining to others why this must be so, I had so far been unable to go beyond speaking in generalities and telling stories.
And so I was happy when I recently came across an article which goes beyond such “hand-waving analysis” and answers this question with some precision. Mats Alvesson and André Spicer, writing in Journal of Management Studies (49:7 November 2012) present “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations” in which they define a key term: functional stupidity. It is functional in that it is required in order for hierarchically structured organizations to avoid disintegration or, at the very least, to function without a great deal of internal friction. It is stupid in that it is a form intellectual impairment: “Functional stupidity refers to an absence of reflexivity, a refusal to use intellectual capacities in other than myopic ways, and avoidance of justifications.” Alvesson and Spicer go on to define the various “…forms of stupidity management that repress or marginalize doubt and block communicative action” and to diagram the information flows which are instrumental to generating and maintaining sufficient levels stupidity within organizations. What follows is my summary of their theory. Before I start, I would like to mention that although the authors’ analysis is limited in scope to corporate entities, I believe that it extends quite naturally to other hierarchically organized bureaucratic systems, such as governments.
Alvesson and Spicer use as their jumping-off point the major leitmotif of contemporary management theory, which is that “smartness,” variously defined as “knowledge, information, competence, wisdom, resources, capabilities, talent, and learning” has emerged as the main business asset and the key to competitiveness—a shift seen as inevitable as industrial economies go from being resource-based to being knowledge-based. By the way, this is a questionable assumption; do you know how many millions of tons of hydrocarbons went into making the smartphone? But this leitmotif is pervasive, and exemplified by management guru quips such as “creativity creates its own prerogative.” The authors point out that there is also a vast body of research on the irrationality of organizations and the limits to organizational intelligence stemming from “unconscious elements, group-think, and rigid adherence to wishful thinking.” There is also no shortage of research into organizational ignorance which explores the mechanisms behind “bounded-rationality, skilled incompetence, garbage-can decision making, foolishness, mindlessness, and (denied) ignorance.” But what they are getting at is qualitatively different from such run-of-the-mill stupidity. Functional stupidity is neither delusional nor irrational nor ignorant: organizations restrict smartness in rational and informed ways which serve explicit organizational interests. It is, if you will, a sort of “enlightened stupidity”:
Functional stupidity is organizationally-supported lack of reflexivity, substantive reasoning, and justification (my italics). It entails a refusal to use intellectual resources outside a narrow and “safe” terrain. It can provide a sense of certainty that allows organizations to function smoothly. This can save the organization and its members from the frictions provoked by doubt and reflection. Functional stupidity contributes to maintaining and strengthening organizational order. It can also motivate people, help them to cultivate their careers, and subordinate them to socially acceptable forms of management and leadership. Such positive outcomes can further reinforce functional stupidity.
The terms I italicized are important, so let’s define each one:
Reflexivity refers to the ability and willingness to question rules, routines and norms rather than follow them unquestioningly. Is your corporation acting morally? Well it doesn’t matter, because “what is right in the corporation is what the guy above you wants from you.” The effects of this attitude tend to get amplified as information travels (or, in this case, fails to travel) down the chain of command: your immediate superior might be a corrupt bastard, but your supreme leader cannot possibly be a war criminal.
Justification refers to the ability and willingness to offer reasons and explanations for one’s own actions, and to assess the sincerity, legitimacy, and truthfulness of reasons and explanations offered by others. In an open society that has freedom of expression, we justify our actions in order to gain the cooperation of others, while in organizational settings we can simply issue orders, and the only justification ever needed is “because the boss-man said so.”
Substantive reasoning refers to the ability and willingness to go beyond the “small set of concerns that are defined by a specific organizational, professional, or work logic.” For example, economists tend to compress a wide range of phenomena into a few numbers, not bothering to think what these numbers actually represent. Organizational and professional settings discourage people from straying from the confines of their specializations and job descriptions, in essence reducing their cognitive abilities to those of idiot-savants.
Functional stupidity can arise spontaneously, because there are many subjective factors which motivate people within organizations to narrow their thinking to the point of achieving it. A certain amount of closed-mindedness can be helpful in furthering your career. It helps you present yourself as a reliable organizational person—one who would never even question the validity of the organizational or occupational paradigm, never mind stray from it. At the other extreme, your refusal to stray beyond a narrow focus may be prompted by feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and fear of jeopardizing your position. And while, just as you would expect, functional stupidity produces negative outcomes for the organization as a whole, it provides for smooth social functioning within the organization itself by suppressing dangerous or uncomfortable questions and by avoiding the awkwardness of calling into question the judgment of your superiors.
But such subjective factors are dwarfed by certain stupidity-generating features of organizations. At their highest level, organizations tend to focus on purely symbolic issues such as “strong corporate cultures and identities, corporate branding, and charismatic leadership.” Corporate (and other) leaders try to project an identical internal and external image of the organization, which may have little to do with reality. This is only possible through stupidity management—the process by which “various actors (including managers and senior executives as well as external figures such as consultants, business gurus, and marketers) exercise power to block communication. The result is that adherence to managerial edicts is encouraged, and criticism or reflection on them is discouraged.”
As the people within the organization internalize this message, they begin to engage in stupidity self-management: they cut short their internal conversations, refusing to ask themselves troubling questions, and focusing instead on a positive, coherent view of their environment and their role within it. But stupidity self-management can also fail when the mismatch between the message and reality becomes too difficult to ignore, ruining morale. The suppressed reality (“The king is naked!”) can spread as a whisper, resulting in passive-aggressive behavior and deliberate foot-dragging all the way to sabotage, defections and resignations.
The functions of stupidity management are to project an image, to encourage stupidity self-management in defense of that image, and to block communication whenever anyone lapses into reflexivity or substantive reasoning, or demands justification. Communication is blocked through the exercise of managerial power. The authors discuss four major ways in which managers routinely exercise their power in defense of functional stupidity: direct suppression, setting the agenda, ideological manipulation, and fetishizing leadership. Of these, direct suppression is by far the simplest: the manager signals to the subordinate that further discussion will not be appreciated, threatening or carrying out disciplinary action if the signaling doesn’t work. Setting the agenda is a more subtle technique; for instance, a typical ploy is to require that all criticisms be accompanied by “constructive suggestions,” placing beyond the pale all problems that do not have immediate solutions (which are the vast majority). Ideological manipulation is more subtle yet; one common technique is to emphasize action, at the expense of deliberation, as expressed by the corporate cliché “stop thinking about it and start doing it!” Finally, fetishizing leadership involves splitting each group into leaders and followers, where the leaders seek to make their mark, whatever it takes, and to get promoted quickly. To do so successfully, they must suppress the critical faculties of those around them, compelling them to act as obedient followers.
Functional stupidity is self-reinforcing. Stupidity self-management, reinforced using the four managerial techniques listed above, produces a fragile, blinkered sort of certainty. By refusing to look in certain directions, people are able to pretend that what is there does not exist. But reality tends to intrude on their field of perception sooner or later, and then the reaction is to retreat into functional stupidity even further: those who can ignore reality the longest are rewarded and promoted, setting an example for others.
But the spell can also be broken when the artificial reality bubble protected by the imaginary film of functional stupidity is punctured by a particularly contradictory outcome. For an individual, the prospect of unemployment or the end to one’s career can produce such a sudden realization: “How could I have been so stupid?” Similarly, entire organizations can be shaken out of their stupor by a painful fiasco that subjects them to a barrage of public criticism. Public hearings in which industry leaders are forced to appear before government committees and answer uncomfortable questions can sometimes serve as stupidity-busting events. A particularly daunting challenge is to pop the functional stupidity bubble of an entire nation, since there is no public forum at which objective outsiders can force national leaders to take part in a substantive discussion. Bearing witness to the fast-approaching end of the nation as a going concern may be of help here. How could we have been so fucking stupid? Well, now you know.
“Clearly, there is something amiss with hierarchically organized groups, something that causes all of them to eventually collapse, but what exactly is it?” ———– from the article
I like Dmitry, I really do, but he takes 1,000 words to say something that could be better said with just 500 words.
Anyway, to answer his question, I think the best answer can be found in The Peter Principle —- “”in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence”.
I’ve seen it thousands of times. So have you. In my former profession a brilliant computer programmer gets a series of promotions, and finally is thrust in a management position. Programming and management are two different skill sets …. often programmers have little to no “people skills”, thus he is now in a position to fuck everything up for a very long time.
Nice to have our own Jim quoted eh? WhoopWhoop.
Timely article, we have a large project that is run by idiots. Every morning the project managers have something stupid to say, attempt to get the rest of us to comply with some insane idea, or provide the hoop we need to jump through before we dance.
All they do is push mountains of paperwork and have a meeting every morning to justify their existence, while the rest of us run the project, they are no more than a mouthpiece for the owners. I sit in meetings and wonder, How did they get this position?
I was wrong about the commute. Horrific. 1 hour and 30 minutes and I almost hit two deer who ran in front of my car.
The carpet guys arrived about 10 minutes ago. It’s raining hard. He said to me, “I need this rain like I need a hole in the head.” I thought to myself, “Fuck yeah. I guess you shouldn’t have called in sick yesterday … when it was a sunny lovely day. haha.” But, I kept my mouth shut, gave them a case of bottled water, and offered them coffee and pastries.
Nine days or so of painting-hell are over. At least we saved ourselves two grand. But, I will never do that kind of job again.
Now get back to your fucking cathedral article. You’re on a deadline. It ain’t writing itself. 🙂
Awesome article. I was thinking MILITARY all the way through it.
When I was in the army, we used to ask ourselves how we could win when we were so amazingly stupid in so many ways. The best guess could come up with was we may be stupid, but we’ve still managed to make fewer mistakes than the other guy.
Solidifies my long past decisions to get away from large organizations. Insanity is inbred and deeply imbedded.
I’m not the suffer in silence type. Though my marriage is now attempting to teach me to be just that, anyway…
I was always a “good worker,” come in early, stay late, miss little, care about my output, think outside the box, learn new skill to better do my job kinda girl, so my bosses would tolerate my “anarchist” thoughts, but dreaded little ever managed to change. It just takes a long damn time to turn an aircraft carrier around. So I left.
These large organizations are some of the root causes of the destruction of this nation. 10,000 employees can be paid to write lawmakers, raise funds, staff events, for the benefit of themselves. Hard for the opposition to connect, even when we outnumber the takers 100,000 to 1.
They become self-serving and evil eventually. All of them. From the religious, to the government, and the mega-corp.
But day-uhm they have a great cheering squad to explain/argue it all away.
Admin – when are you gonna change your life? That commute will kill you – body or spirit – eventually. It is not worth it in the long run.
Avalon will help you get out, I am sure. Don’t do it forever. Life is too short.
I can’t put the kids through college on my good looks.
I’ll tell Avalon to start under-reporting her tips to the IRS. That should help.
You still need a plan.
My plan is to work here for 10 more years and get my kids through college with no debt. I’ll then retire at 62 years old and have a massive life ending heart attack two weeks later. Avalon will cash in $1 million in life insurance and move to Avalon NJ.
Admin,
That the same plan I have, same timeline and everything, I just hope my liver holds out.
Bob.
Admin enjoying his retirement
[img]https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTfzOt0CVsGLUKCDEuCj7OdVTqMeP0bs7_Yc6n1V6stbzcIDutm[/img]
“I discovered that anarchic organizations can go on forever while hierarchical ones inevitably end in collapse.”
IOW, Somalia will outlast the US. 🙂
I’ve had the exquisite experience of being smack-dab in middle management several times in my career and it always ended up the same way…my subordinates and I, against “them” (the fucking stupid upper management). The “go along to get along” in American business was rampant then and from what I hear, much worse today.
Admin – So your plan is to commit a felony, followed by 10 years of ever increasing hell, followed by death.
That plan sucks.
You need a better plan.
How about quitting and joining the FSA?
Any suggestions? Should I start my own business?
I will think about it. I would offer serious suggestions, but I know zero about your circumstances. I suspect they are far better than you are letting on.
But that commute is soul destroying.
“Awesome article. I was thinking MILITARY all the way through it.
When I was in the army, we used to ask ourselves how we could win when we were so amazingly stupid in so many ways. The best guess could come up with was we may be stupid, but we’ve still managed to make fewer mistakes than the other guy. ” – Gil
Same here, bro.
Stuck talked about the Peter Principal – “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence”
But I like ours better: “Fuck up, move up”.
Late in my military career, I just stopped giving a fuck and called out stupidity when I saw it. Went to a briefing after the Khobar Towers were attacked. Some former-whoever was giving the briefing, and all of us NCO’s and Officers were piled into the theater to listen to what this fucknut had to say.
Let me preclude his fucking stupidity by saying that the Khobar Towers attack was awful. The whole front of the building was blasted away and/or collapsed.
This.
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Anyways, this douche is standing up there going on about “proactive measures” they’ve taken in the face of this heinous attack. He holds up some puny piece of flimsy plastic or other, and starts going on about how all the windows were going to be coated with this new, high speed film that will reduce casualties into the future. I was reminded of that line from Die Hard: “Glass?!? Who gives a fuck about glass?!”
I raised my hand.
Me: “I’ve seen the footage from Khobar Towers”.
Him: “Okay”.
Me: “The bomb used was big enough and powerful enough to blow away the entire front of the building. And your answer to combat this is… Mylar over the windows?”
Dead silence for about 5 seconds. He got over his shock, but his answer was drowned out by the laughter. Having made my point, I didn’t much care what he had to say after that.
The worst were the West Point Lieutenants. The “this is the way I was taught, so this is the way you will do it” types… couldn’t think out of the box if you gave them a whole ‘nother brain to use…
Our old crew, we didn’t give a shit about rank a whole lot… we were all close, addressed each other by first name, knew each others families and we kicked ass. Anyone was free to throw out an idea… good ideas are not the sole province of whoever’s in charge. Outside our little circle, we had to be careful, since the higher ups frowned upon shit like calling your troops or your chief by their first names…
Hey Stuck…
You get that info I posted for you? About the schnapps? See… you’re hip deep in the shit and I hook you up…