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JOHN TOBIN VERSION HISTORY
Date Version Description Name
28-10-2016 0-1 John Tobin Naked Trust 102516 Final BM TC (1) (1)457 v4 BM
Bob
07-11-2016 0-2 First format David
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Naked Trust Understanding trust as simple predictability in local interaction
John H. TobinIn this article, I argue that trust, as usually deployed in organisations, is
what Mead (1923) calls a cult value. This is an idealisation - rarely
achieved in reality—which can be paradoxically inspirational/aspirational
and destructive at the same time. When creating a culture of trust
becomes a management project, it becomes an instrument of power, with
the negative effects of stifling reflexivity, compelling conformity of
behaviour, etc. As professional organisations (e.g. Mintzberg 1989), in
which communities of practice are prevalent, hospitals are especially
resistant to top-down trust building programmes. In contrast to the
business literature on how to build an organisation-wide culture of trust, I
suggest that genuine trusting relationships develop spontaneously in
smaller groupings, both formal and ad hoc, which are characterised by interdependency, common interest
and stability over time. This has implications for how we understand and foster trust in organisational life.
Keywords: trust, cult value, functional stupidity, communities of practice, predictability, professional organisation
IntroductionWhen I retired after some 35 years as a hospital executive in the US, I planned to use the extra time that
retirement affords to do some reading, research, reflection and writing. I have always been interested in the
realities of management practice, and I have learned to rely on common sense and the practical wisdom
one gains through lived experience. A retiree’s freedom from the everyday politics of organisational life also
affords an opportunity to reflect on one’s experience from a more detached perspective, and therefore,
perhaps, with a bit more honesty and objectivity than is possible for one still so enmeshed. Over the years,
I’ve also “discovered” writers and thinkers outside of the standard business literature genre who think about
management issues and concerns in novel ways that resonate with my own experience. These people offer
much more to the thoughtful executive than the avalanche of often faddish advice of most orthodox
management theorists, consultants and other experts.
I hope to illustrate in this article how these ideas and reflections led me to a different way of thinking about
the concept of trust in organisational life.
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Trust definedCreating a “culture of trust” seems to be among the hot topics currently making the consulting rounds. A
Google search of “trust in organisations” will turn up scores of articles whose authors define trust in terms of
certain positive values and traits--loyalty, caring, fairness, integrity, competence, consistency—and assign
leaders the role of creating a culture of trust within their organisations through behaviours that enact those
traits, such as ethical personal behaviour, open communication, social responsibility, sensitivity to employee
needs, and the like. They claim that trust, and a culture of trust so defined, is essential to corporate results
and performance, because it enables collaboration and fosters employee loyalty and commitment. A good
example: http://rube.asq.org/hdl/2010/06/a-primer-on-organizational-trust.pdf.
After introducing a bit of theory, I briefly explore why cultural context, the phenomenon of “stupidity
management”, and the peculiarities of the professional organisation render trust an elusive goal in many
modern organisations.
Trust: culture…or cult?
According to early 20th Century philosopher and social
psychologist George Herbert Mead (e.g. 1908; 1923),
ethical problems arise in society when the competing
values and needs of individuals come into conflict.
Historically, such problems were simply referred back to
the authority and rules of some powerful institution like the
Church. Mead believed that the more complex ethical
dilemmas of the modern world (and, indeed, modern social
problems in general), could not be reduced to compliance
versus non-compliance with fixed principles. Rather, they
could and should be resolved through application of the
same methodological principles that were at that time
having such spectacular successes in the natural sciences.
All factors and competing interests in play must be
subjected to rational analysis in order to formulate a course
of action satisfactory to all the actors. (Joas, 1985)
Mead (1923) acknowledged that there were barriers to such an enterprise in the social realm that ideally
should have no correlates in the natural sciences. Mead called these “cult values”—social controls in the
form of idealised values that develop within societies and are embodied in that society’s institutions. Cult
values are an important part of our social heritage and fundamental to societal cohesion. They can be both
inspirational and aspirational in that they hold out to members of a society that which is desirable, possible
and worth striving for, but rarely, if ever, fully realised. “Liberal Democracy” is such a cult value in the West,
a persistent ideal despite the manifest shortcomings of our actual governing institutions and processes.
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Cult values are destructive and polarising when adherence suppresses rational assessment of the cult itself.
Opposing cult values and the ideologies they spawn, such as climate change, the Second Amendment to the
US Constitution, national border integrity, for example, are held by people at the opposite ends of the political
spectrum in the US with such tenacity that common-sense compromises based on facts and analysis are
impossible to achieve. When such cult values are espoused by a governing elite, they enable the powerful
to impose conformity on the rest of the group. Border security, for example, is contentious around the world:
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-border-wall-global-immigration-security-2016-9.
Cult values are not limited to whole societies, but can be found in any group or faction within that society—
including large corporations. Trust, as that concept is usually deployed in organisations, is just such a cult
value. When creating a culture of trust becomes a management project, it can become an instrument of
power that stifles reflexivity, compels conformity of behaviour, etc.
And, a bit more theory…
Stupidity management and the cult of trust
(Source of image: DILBERT © 2011 Scott Adams. Used By permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved).
A few years ago, in response to this marked increase of articles in the business literature concerning trust,
Stacey (2012) wrote a thoughtful article on trust, as it is treated in both the popular business and the
scholarly literature, for his Complexity and Management Centre blog
(https://complexityandmanagement.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/trust-in-organisations/).
Stacey thoroughly researched ways in which the concept is defined by thinkers in various disciplines.
However, practising managers are not likely to think so deeply about trust or consult the scholarly literature.
For most of us, a good dictionary definition is more than enough: “Firm reliance on the integrity, character or
ability of a person or thing” or “Belief that someone or something is honest, good, reliable, effective, etc.” As
Stacey notes, management consultants also tend to define trust in this way.
Stacey then introduced his readers to a provocative article, “A Stupidity Based Theory of Organization”, by
Mats Alvesson and Andre Spicer (2012), in which the authors introduce the concepts of “functional stupidity”
and “stupidity management”, and which they further develop and expand upon in their new book, “The
Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work” (Alvesson & Spicer 2016).
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According to Alvesson and Spicer,
‘…functional stupidity is inability and/or unwillingness to use cognitive and reflective capacities in
anything other than narrow and circumspect ways. It involves a lack of reflexivity, a disinclination
to require or provide justification, and avoidance of substantive reasoning’. (2016, p 239)
Rhetoric versus realityStacey argues that the rhetoric of trust-building behaviours includes involving employees in decision making,
encouraging employees to demand and expect justification for decisions and policies, establishing self-
managing teams, and the like. But such “empowerment” behaviours threaten executives’ status and raison
d’être, and shift unwanted responsibilities to employees.
To avoid the resulting stress and uncertainty, leaders resort to behaviours that have the effect of suppressing
reflexivity, encouraging conformity, and deflecting challenges to management diktats. Examples include
setting agendas, promoting a cult of leadership (the boss knows best), promoting company ideologies (action
orientation, optimism), limiting criticism by defining when and how criticism is allowed (only criticise if you
have a solution to offer) and so forth. These are exactly the strategies that encourage functional stupidity.
Since many employees do not want the responsibility and accountability that accompanies empowerment,
they collude with management through actions and attitudes that Alvesson and Spicer call “stupidity self-
management”.
Cult succumbs to stupidityStacey was struck by the similarity between the rhetoric of trust building as it appears in both the scholarly,
but more particularly, in the mainstream business literature, and the reality of management behaviours that
Alvesson and Spicer describe and document. Linking this with Mead’s notion of cult value allows me to
suggest a plausible explanation for the fact that organisation-wide trust is rarely achieved in practice. The
strategies prescribed by experts to achieve “a culture of trust” are simply too threatening to management
power, status and legitimacy, whilst imposing unwelcome responsibility and accountability on workers. Both
employ the strategies of functional stupidity to undermine the trust-building project.
Trust and mistrust emerge in social processesWhat actually happens, Stacey argues, is that the dynamics of trust and mistrust in organisations emerge in
interactions among individuals and small groups at the local level. Individuals develop attitudes of trust or
mistrust toward other individuals or groups through lived experience in social interaction. Individuals coming
into an organisational setting are predisposed toward certain attitudes by their own social history. Attitudes
concerning trust and mistrust can be shaded and nuanced, rather than manifest as an either/or dichotomy,
and will evolve over time. In Stacey’s view, it is the emergent social structure itself and the institutions of our
disciplinary society that constrain behaviour in ways that enable collaboration and cooperation without having
to fall back on some illusory culture of trust at all.
With this as background, let us now look at the ways in which trust actually does emerge in the professional
organisation, one type of which is the hospital.
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The emergence of trust in communities of practiceTechnician as archetypeIn an article directly relevant to hospital organisations, Barley (1996) and his colleagues did an extensive
ethnographic study of technical work. Barley argues that the nature of work in modern, post-industrial
organisations has become increasingly technical in nature. The technician has emerged as an archetype of
the modern, post-industrial worker, while organisational and management theory, and the organisational
forms and management techniques that result, remain rooted in an image of work that obtained in the
industrial economy of the mid-20th century. To bring management and organisational theory into sync with
the nature of the modern workforce, Barley proposes the technician as a useful standard type upon which to
base further study and analysis.
Barley describes technicians as intermediaries between the real world and the world of signs and symbols. In
health care, technicians use technologies to abstract flesh and blood human beings into images and data.
These abstractions are then interpreted by medical professionals, who design therapies—still in the
abstracted form of drug dosages, radiation beams, electrical stimulation—that technicians, using their
machines and instruments, apply to flesh and blood humans to ameliorate their ailments. In a hospital, there
are many explicitly technical disciplines—laboratory technology, radiologic technology, for example--and
other disciplines, such as nursing and medicine, that have a significant technical component to their
practices.
‘Trust building’ as an entirely local processWhat is relevant here is the social construction of technical work and its bearing on the notion of hospital
leaders creating an organisation-wide culture of trust. Technicians tend to form highly localised, idiosyncratic
communities of practice whose members learn from each other, share information and workplace habits, and
work in a highly
interdependent relationship
with related professionals
(medical technologists with
pathologists, for example).
As Illustration 1 here
illustrates, members of
communities of practice work
in close physical proximity
with each other, share
common interests and speak
a common language--the
nomenclature and jargon of
their specialty (Etienne &
Beverley Wenger-Traynor
2015).
Illustration 1: Knowledge creation within a community of practice
(Source: Allan, B. (Designer). (2008). Knowledge creation within a community of practice. [Web]. Downloaded from https://convcme.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/communities-of-practice-a-framework-for-learning-and-
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improvement/#comments )
Managerialising the hospital Although trends in hospitals today favour (or, perhaps, are forcing) integration of managerial and clinical
functions, the typical US community hospital has, for the most part, retained the organisational structure that
it has had for decades. When I began my career some 35 years ago, there was a clear division of authority
and responsibility between the managerial and clinical aspects of hospital governance. The executive and
board functions were responsible for managing the business of the hospital, such as billing and collections,
facilities maintenance, fundraising, and the like. Managing the care of patients was the responsibility of a
medical staff composed almost entirely of physicians in private practice. Nursing management was
accountable to and subordinate to both managerial and clinical strands of governance. They were
responsible to management for budgets, staffing levels and the like, and to physicians for actual patient care.
To the extent that administrative management was involved in clinical matters, it was in an essentially
supportive role, in respect of, for example, regulatory compliance, resources, facilities, and equipment.
Illustration 2 below shows these two distinct, traditional strands of governance.
Illustration 2: A simplified (US) Hospital Organisation Chart, 1970s
The growing predominance of the business paradigm in US hospital managementAs one would expect, the professional educational preparation for hospital executives was geared toward
this business management role. Now, however, driven by the increasing domination of the health care
industry by government bureaucracies, changes in tort law, the growing extent to which medical care is
provided by doctors directly employed by the hospital, and other factors, the hospital corporation as a legal
entity has become increasingly accountable for managing the clinical work, too. That, in turn, has resulted in
a gradual growth in the power and status of managerial function at the expense of the professional/technical
function. Despite this change, however, the education of hospital executives remains firmly rooted in the
business paradigm. For those of us who lived through this transition, it was possible to partially compensate
for this educational deficit by bringing physicians into the senior management team, by elevating the status of
nursing within the management hierarchy, and by picking up a certain amount of clinical knowledge
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through personal effort and osmosis. But as the technology of medicine becomes more complex and
pervasive, managerially trained executives cannot function effectively in both worlds. Hospitals and other
professional organisations have become increasingly “managerialised”. Consequently,
professional/technical work is increasingly subordinated to management control and tensions (or outright
subversion) inevitably arise between the two groups. (Scott, 1990)
The culture clash in managerialised professional organisationsOne would anticipate that members of a close-knit community of practice, with its insider/outsider dynamics,
would be non-receptive – if not outright hostile -- to so called best practices and other prescriptions imposed
by outsiders to the community of practice, especially if those outsiders are perceived to be ignorant of the
nature of the work being performed. And in the typical hospital, senior management is just such an outsider:
“An increasingly horizontal distribution of expertise not only undermines hierarchy as a coordinating
mechanism, it undercuts management’s source of legitimacy. When those in authority no longer comprehend
the work of their subordinates, hierarchical position alone is an insufficient justification for authority, especially in
technical matters. Under such conditions, leaders who insist otherwise, risk making decisions based on
incomplete information, faulty understandings, and criteria that sacrifice long-run effectiveness, which, even in
the absence of a turbulent macroeconomic environment, should almost guarantee that firms will perform
poorly.” (Barley, 1996, p. 438)
Generalising the hospital argumentModern business organisations and social institutions are characterised by increasingly granular division of
labour and specialised function, and thus by a high level of interdependence among the organisation’s
members. Any work beyond the simplest tasks can only be done through collaboration. All organisations
generate many groupings, many of which are random assemblages (as far as the participants are
concerned) formed by the structure of the organisation itself. Such groupings include departments, sections,
nursing units in hospitals, groups who work together in large offices, and so forth. There are also ad hoc
groups put together for some specific purpose, e.g. committees, task groups and the like.
The following table (Table 1) suggests characteristics of the formal and informal groupings that can be found
in a typical US community hospital. However, it is essential to emphasise the obvious: formal and informal
group dynamics are going on within and among members of all groups all the time, and groupings continually
evolve and change. Therein lies the complexity of organisational life and the emergent culture of each
organisation. Reality never fits into neat tables or grids.
Within and among these groupings are the technology based communities of practice I’ve described above.
In these smaller groupings, which tend to be relatively stable over time, the experience of day to day
interaction makes it possible to get to know, with a high degree of certainty, how one’s co-workers are likely
to behave in different circumstances. Interaction also helps to shape that behaviour, diminishing uncertainty
even further. No amount of exhortation from rather remote senior executives (especially in larger
organisations), no matter how eloquent they may be or how exemplary their personal behaviour might be,
can have an effect even remotely comparable to everyday, “up close and personal” interaction. In whichever
ways these local interactions play into the broader culture of an organisation, trust-building is an entirely local
process.
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Table 1: Formal and informal groups in a typical US community hospitalFormal/Structural Formal/Special Purpose Informal
Example Divisions, Departments, Sections—the elements of a typical organisation chart
Committees, task groups, special purpose teams, regularly scheduled meetings (e.g., monthly Department Managers)
Highly variable: One-to-one friendships to communities of practice
Source of Authority/Legitimacy
Senior Leadership Senior Leadership Emerges within the group
Size Large: 25 to hundreds Smaller: 10 to 50, but may be larger or smaller
Small: 2 to whatever emerges within the group
Purpose Channels of authority and accountability as well as “official” communication
Completion of assigned tasks
Meet needs and interests of individuals involved. Usually a mix of social and work related activity.
Type of Communication
Some face to face conversation, but much written: reports, memoranda, email
Mostly face to face conversation, but some electronic. Work output mostly written: reports, minutes, presentations
Mostly face to face conversation, some electronic, rarely written.
Venue Within formal structure Within formal structure May emerge within formal structure, or emerge across organisational boundaries
Duration Years to life of the organization
Depends on function and whether convened for specific task or ongoing (e.g., standing committee). Weeks to years to life of the organisation
Highly variable and generally less stable. Some forms persistent while membership changes over time (e.g., communities of practice)
Content of Communication
Official, “public transcripts”
Task Oriented, but within official transcripts
Gossip, and “hidden transcripts”, but also trust building and knowledge formation and trans-mission (Scott, 1990, p14)
Structure Well defined by position, rules, policies
Well defined by position and skill set
Emergent, no specific structure
Group Leadership Defined by position. May involve “charisma” but rarely dynamic.
Defined by position, skills and experience. May be more dynamic, based on individual skills, experience and personal qualities.
Fluid and dynamic within the group, based on needs, personal traits, skills, experience and other factors
(Source: Tolbin 2016)
Within and among these groupings are the technology based communities of practice I’ve described above.
In these smaller groupings, which tend to be relatively stable over time, the experience of day to day
interaction makes it possible to get to know, with a high degree of certainty, how one’s co-workers are likely
to behave in different circumstances. Interaction also helps to shape that behaviour, diminishing uncertainty
even further. No amount of exhortation from rather remote senior executives (especially in larger
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organisations), no matter how eloquent they may be or how exemplary their personal behaviour might be,
can have an effect even remotely comparable to everyday, “up close and personal” interaction. In whichever
ways these local interactions play into the broader culture of an organisation, trust-building is an entirely local
process.
My own experience has been that there is much more cohesion and camaraderie in these small groupings
than in the organisation as a whole. If asked why our hospital was a good place to work, our staff would
inevitably talk about their relationships with, and support from, their immediate co-workers.
There is a lot of how-to advice in the business literature on teamwork and trust building in teams, but I
believe that more genuine trusting relationships emerge spontaneously in these small groupings simply
because their members experience working together over an extended time.
Understanding trust as simple predictability in a local contextIf organisation-wide trust is an elusive goal, where does that leave managers who must facilitate
collaboration and engagement?
Most of the value-laden associations we have with the word trust are irrelevant for getting work done. Over
time, I have concluded that the essence of trust, at least the kind of trust that is necessary to get work done,
is nothing more than predictability. We learn through experience how to anticipate the likely actions of others
in given circumstances, and this reduces the uncertainty that can inhibit collaboration and cooperation. We
can trust, in the sense I am talking about here, devious and dishonourable colleagues, if their behaviour is
consistent over time.
It is also a simple reality in organisations—indeed, in social processes of any sort—that any one of us can
only sustain meaningful interaction with a limited number of other people at any given time. Relationships of
the kind that can foster genuine trust require time and effort to develop and sustain, and this only happens
through an on-going process of direct, interpersonal dialogue— i.e. simple, everyday conversation.
Within a work setting, our most important relationships will be with those who are most necessary to the
accomplishment of our own work, and we to theirs.
A Tale of One City (with Two Hospitals): the hypothesis as practice The small city in which I served as a hospital CEO is a typical New England factory town. The city has two
hospitals. Both organisations date from the late 19 th century; ours as a charity organisation founded by local
business leaders and industrialists, and the other a Catholic hospital established by the local Catholic
diocese to care for the mostly Catholic “working poor” immigrants who worked in the mills. The hospitals’
decades-long rivalry with each other was outwardly cordial, but privately mistrustful, not just at the executive
level, but also among boards of directors and respective medical staff members. The relationship had been
clouded by too many overtly competitive moves, too many misunderstandings, too much pride, too much
investment in local cultural, ethnic and economic class divisions.
As we moved into a post-industrial economy during the 1960s and 1970s, the community’s economy went
into a long decline. It became increasingly clear that the city could no longer sustain two hospitals, and both
hospitals became financially weaker. A prolonged work stoppage at our hospital showed that, if one hospital
was unable to function for any reason, the other couldn’t handle the patient load, and the entire community
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suffered. A few leaders from each hospital’s board of trustees attempted to negotiate a merger of the two
hospitals to end what was seen increasingly as wasteful, destructive and ultimately pointless competition.
The merger project—the first of several—failed to overcome several obstacles, despite a good faith effort by
all involved.
Rather than give up on a merger altogether, the boards then charged the two CEOs with finding an
alternative means of moving the hospitals closer together and reducing competition. My counterpart and I
proposed a cancer treatment facility built around modern radiation therapy equipment. Neither hospital had
first rate cancer treatment equipment or facilities, and radiation therapy is primarily an outpatient modality.
Hence such a facility could meet a true health care need in our community, but could do so without changing
the hospitals’ relative competitive positions - the proverbial “win/win”. After some weeks of negotiation, in
which my counterpart and I participated directly (but no other executives from either hospital team did) the
hospitals reached an agreement. My own management team remained sceptical of our new partner’s
intentions, despite my reassurances. But, with the deal in hand, I went off on a long planned vacation with
my wife.
While we were away, my counterpart CEO made a comment that was quoted in the local newspaper. At this
point, I have no recollection of exactly what she said or how accurately she was quoted, but her comment
was interpreted by members of my management team as implying that our partner intended to renege on the
deal before it was formally consummated, and instead proceed to build a cancer centre on their own. I got
a frantic conference telephone call that evening with my senior team, who said, in essence, “See, we told
you…they are going to stab us in the back. You must come home immediately. We’ve purchased the plane
ticket, scheduled an emergency board meeting for tomorrow morning and a news conference tomorrow
afternoon. You have to announce that we are going to build a cancer centre on our own and beat them to
the punch.” I listened to this for a few minutes as all of this was sinking in, and I told them I thought their
reaction and proposed response were crazy. I instructed them to cancel the board meeting and press
conference, and told them I was absolutely not making an emergency trip back to CT. I said I would call my
counterpart in the morning to find out exactly what she said, to make sure she remained committed to the
deal we had made.
The following morning, I did have that conversation, and was reassured that the comment that precipitated
the mini-crisis was innocent and had been misinterpreted. We had a very nice conversation that served two
purposes. I was reassured that there was nothing amiss; but it also was a way to notify my counterpart of
the suspicions members of our leadership team and some of my board members held. Having given her
assurances to me directly, it would be very difficult to go back on that promise. I then called my board chair
and discussed the situation, and we agreed that everything was “on track” as it had been. My wife and I
enjoyed the rest of our holiday in peace.
The cancer centre project went forward. After raising $11 million for the project with a joint fund raising
campaign—another community first—we built a beautiful, modern facility that serves our community to this
day. The cancer centre was followed by another unsuccessful attempt at a full merger of the hospitals and
then by another joint project, this one to establish a joint open heart surgery program. Again, we achieved a
huge enhancement of the local health care system without giving one hospital or the other a competitive
edge.
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All of this was possible without improving the underlying trust versus mistrust dynamics of the two competing
organisations. Gaining experience over time with the motives, biases and patterns of behaviour of the other
organisation’s leaders made it possible to develop an effective working relationship and to solve practical
problems.
Conclusion: the CEO’s role in trust building is important but limitedIn a professional organisation, such as a hospital, the CEO’s job is to make sure the work units are staffed by
competent people, that they have the necessary equipment and supplies, that they have means of
communication, that they have the resources needed to handle the unexpected, that they have a safe and
comfortable physical environment, and so forth. While that’s all important, senior management in a
professional organisation has very little to do with how work gets done “on the front lines.”
The CEO in any organisation serves an important symbolic role. It’s important for the CEO to “set the tone”
through example and to be considered by the workforce to be a person of competence, integrity and good
practical judgment. I certainly think of myself as a person of integrity, and always tried to act with openness
and honesty during my working years. But I also knew that I was just “the boss” to many of our staff, with all
the negatives that implies. I also believe that an ethical executive will act with integrity for its own sake, not
in pursuit of some corporate goal.
Many people enjoy working in a company with a charismatic, “rock star” CEO. But none of that matters much
in day to day work. High levels of work satisfaction, effective collaboration and “engagement” are all fine, but
it’s important to remember that the only people one needs to trust are most likely to be those standing next to
you.
Collaboration in organisations is built on interdependence, and on the means and ends of task
accomplishment. Of course, the most intimate relationships in our lives—family ties, close friendships, et
cetera--involve a great deal more than means and ends. But working relationships are primarily about
means and ends and other practical considerations. Understanding trust as simple predictability enables
collaboration, avoids clouding our business relationships with unnecessary and subjective baggage, and is
fundamentally more honest than preaching trust while practising stupidity management.
Suggested ReadingMead, G. H. George Herbert Mead never developed a complete system of ethics, and his ideas on ethics
are scattered among several essays and other writings. An excellent overview and analysis can be found in Joas, Hans (1997). G. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought, pp. 124-144, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.
Other relevant references for Mead:
Mead, G. H. (1908). “The Philosophical Basis of Ethics”, International Journal of Ethics, vol. 28, pp. 311-323
Mead, G. H. (1923). “The Scientific Method and the Moral Sciences”, International Journal of Ethics, Vol 33, pp. 229-147
Other sources
Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A. (2012), “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations”. Journal of Management Studies, vol. 49, pp. 1194–1220. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6486.2012.01072.x
Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A. (2016). The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work, London, Profile Books Ltd. (Kindle Edition)
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Barley, S. R. (1996). “Technicians in the Workplace: Ethnographic Evidence for Bringing Work into Organizational Studies”, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 41, no.3, pp. some 354-441. Available at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/WTO/cgi-bin/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/pub_old/1996%20Technicians%20in%20the%20Workplace.pdf
Griffin, D. (2002). The Emergence of Leadership: Linking Self-Organisation and Ethics, London and New York, Routledge
Joas, H. (1997). G. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. (originally published in German, 1980)
Mintzberg, H. (1989), Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations, New York, The Free Press, pp. 173-195.
Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven and London, Yale University Press
Taylor, J. R & Van Every, E. J. (2014), When Organization Fails: Why Authority Matters, New York, Routledge (Kindle Edition). Although not cited directly in this article it was important background reading. Leaders of professional/knowledge organisations will find “When Organization Fails” valuable in understanding the problems and conflicts that arise when upper management does not fully understand the nature of the work being done by those who deal directly with the organisation’s customers.
Wenger-Trayner, E. & B. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice: a brief overview of the concept and its uses. http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/. Accessed 15/10/16
About the authorJohn H. Tobin, DMan, MPH retired at the end of 2010 after a 35-year career in hospital management, 23 of
those years as CEO of Waterbury Hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut. He received a Doctor of Management
degree from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK in 2003, and a Master of Public Health from Yale
University in 1975. Throughout his career, he served on boards or committees of numerous professional
organisations as well as community service organisations concerned with social services, education,
philanthropy and economic development. John’s interests include the practical application of concepts from
the complexity sciences to everyday problems, particularly the ethics hospital quality and safety. You can
contact John at [email protected]
e-ORGANISATIONS & PEOPLE, WINTER 2016, VOL. 23, NO. 4 PAGE 18 WWW.AMED.ORG.UK
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