| The New Bossism | ||||
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is the ideology that being a boss is an end in itself. It is an archaic tradition that undermines modern management Bossism is a set of dysfunctional behaviours and beliefs which create toxic and inefficient organisational culture. Bossists spout management jargon but they are the mere court jesters of the management world. Bossism is a parody of good management theory and practice and is even a “dumbed-down” version of managerialism. It substitutes raw, narcissistic power for reason, leadership, and enlightened management. The main aim of the individual bossist is to maintain their position and power. The main aim of the bossist company board, executive or professional group is to maintain their power and status. Executives and supervisors in a bossist organisation will back each other at all costs, leading to:
Is your organisation locked into the ancient cult of Bossism? Read on.
Tom Benjamin Margaret Penhall-Jones
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How bossism is costing you money
Rise in stress claims: a simple explanation
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Profile of a Bossist | ||
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The ideology of bossism asserts that the 'boss' achieved their position through merit and therefore must not be challenged. Bossists in an organisation focus on:
The bossist shows loyalty only to the elite group to which they belong (or hope one day to belong) – whether this is the company Executive group, the “Board” or a group of professionals. In the face of a challenge to the group, the bossist will indulge in “doublethink”, mental gymnastics, other and self-deception, manipulation and worse in order to avoid any change in the status-quo. Recently, some writers have confused this and similar behaviour with “managerialism”. Briefly, the latter is a belief in the universal applicability of 20th Century management principles. Bossism is part of more ancient belief systems.
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Bullying and Bossism Bullying is a related concept. It is bossism that keeps bullies in power. It explains why no one in higher management ever seems to notice or be able to do anything about the incompetence, corruption, and devastation caused by bullies supposedly under their control.
Bullies have a psychopathic lack of empathy and disregard for the damage they do to others. Bullies have learned to mouth bossist and managerialist platitudes to excuse their inefficient and destructive behaviours . They rely on the entrenched bossism in toxic organisations to support and cover up their bullying behaviour. Bullies tend to be narcissistic, to lack empathy and to be sadistic. They can’t cope with pressure and need to control their surroundings. Bullies react to perceived threats with physical or psychological violence. Unfortunately, “perceived threats” can include employees who are:
than the bully. Research shows that male bullies generally seek to control and 'neutralise' their targets while female bullies seek to destroy them. They justify this as 'righteous head-kicking' -ie- 'sometimes we have to get tough'. Which ought to raise questions as to why the need to get tough - public interest? shareholder benefit? or cover-up? When bossism fosters and covers-up bullying the result is a terrorised workforce which diminishes in skill and ability to the lowest common denominator. The output of the organisation stagnates or diminishes (while costs often escalate).
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| Costs of Bossism | |||
| Direct costs |
Bossism should not be confused with management or even 'managerialism'. It is a mere charicature of management. It has the jargon and buzz-words but is devoid of the means of getting things done. Where there are no experienced, trained managers it is likely that bossism will be the default management style. Bossing people around for its own sake results in:
Studies on "bullying", which we define as a subset (ie malignant, sadistic bossists) have created estimates as high as $36 billion per year in Australia through needless rehiring, litigation, and lost work time.
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| Indirect costs |
If non-malignant ("benign") bossists were included, the figure would be much higher as it would also cover areas where incompetence is merely accepted as part of the culture. Yet you pay for public services. Even if it's someone else's mum whose hospital death gets covered up, you pay for it with:
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| Rise in Stress Claims | |||
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The vicious cycle |
Stress claims are a warning sign. Even if some stress claims proved unfounded, this would still raise questions about management quality within an organization. We believe there is a very simple explanation as to why we can expect the proportion of stress claims to gradually increase:
The vicious circle above is a simple recipe for cost blow-outs. Even benign, well-intentioned management responses often involve sending the claimant for a psychiatric examination. Few things could be more humiliating. Yet this is not even proper medical practice. The sorts of psychiatric diseases that might actually lead to a false claim should have gross symptoms affecting more than work issues. It is the knee-jerk bossist solution to send whistleblowers for such bogus investigation as a punishment, rather than dealing with the problems in the organisation which spawned the claim.
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What is a stress claim? |
A common bossist fiction is that stress claims have to do with pressure of work or people who can't or don't want to handle a normal workload. Unless we're talking about ambulance officers or pilots, most other workers' stress comes from the people in the workplace, not the task. Indeed, a common stress claim is that they are not being given enough work. The boss is ordering them to sit and do nothing as a punishment. The bossist managers above are allowing this waste to go on because they feel they must support the bossist supervisor, even to the point of waste and inefficiency. There are legal requirements to provide a safe workplace. This includes freedom from "psychological hazards". The NSW Charter of Dignity & Respect in the Workplace lists, among other things:
Clearly little of this has to do with the pressure of the task. It has to do with interactions between people.
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| What Keeps Bossism Going? | |||
| History |
Historical basis of Bossism Historically the term “bossism” applied to political bosses such as New York’s Boss Tweed, who operated along the feudal lines of a seigneur who supplied protection from other bosses in return for the loyalty and sworn oath of support from the vassals. Such systems are still very common world-wide and these bosses are often referred to as “warlords” Our “New Bossism” reflects the historical origins of the term. The “boss” is given authority through his or her insertion into a social role. Once in place they are no longer dependent on performance, leadership qualities, or even observance of the law. The entrenched boss is often supported by other authorities in the organisation and by the State. Importantly, even when the supporting authorities agree that the “boss” is a bad one and has to go, this is done subtly, “behind the scenes” so that the status of the elite group is not threatened. At the same time, considerable resources are expended in silencing or discrediting the individual who challenged the system. Thus the corrupt public sector manager is allowed to quietly move or resign while the whistleblower’s career and reputation are ruined. The parallels to the Mafia, with its alleged culture of “made men” are obvious.
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| Support |
Why do bossists support each other? If performance is judged on some objective criteria, such as sales or market share, it would seem logical that bossism would give way to managerialism and the managers would themselves be under scrutiny for performance. That is not what happens in bossist cultures. There have been plenty of corporate collapses to bear witness that bossism is not limited to the public sector. Scapegoats are found and the bosses who allowed these scapegoats to allegedly fail are seen to be blameless. Restructures are carried out and the scapegoats are expelled while the incompetent managers get promotions. The whole challenge of 20th century management, in terms of learning organisations and flatter hierarchies, had been to try and rise above this bossist legacy.
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| Symptoms of Bossism | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Labels |
Comparison of Bossist and Manager’s self statements
one of the surest symptoms of bossism is to never investigate -ie trust the other bossist's word rather than trying to find the facts.
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| Indirect costs |
You pay for public services. Even if someone else's mum dies in hospital and it gets covered up you pay for it. The NSW Parliament General Purpose Standing Committee No. 2 report Complaints Handling within NSW Health (No. 17, June 2004) found: "People go into hospital expecting to be healed or to come out better than when they went in…When permanent disability, or even death, results from time spent in hospital, we must learn how to handle that, learn from mistakes and put into practice systemic protocols to ensure that it does not happen in future… Unfortunately, evidence to our inquiry suggests we have a long way to go in developing a health care culture that is transparent about mistakes and is willing and able to learn from them…Indeed, many staff members suffered what they believed to be severe harassment. ... Although some good systems are in place to encourage reporting of adverse reactions, the present culture is an unwillingness to be open about and to learn from them".
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| Cures for Bossism | |||
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Cures
Causes |
The remedy for bossist culture is a form of cognitive behaviour therapy. This consists of
Note that punishment is not mentioned. The idea is to extinguish the behaviour through lack of reward. Psychologists have long known that punishments (like electric shocks) often only bury the urges. The goal is to show new ways of managing that will replace and forever bury any urge to go back to bossist ways. In cognitive behavioural terms, dysfunctional attitudes are bits of folk-wisdom that people have collected since childhood. Parents, peers, TV, and movies give children ideas of how bosses should behave. These views are dysfunctional because they are distortions of genuine facts and research findings and they interfere with getting on with the job. They tend to have in common unrealistically high expectations and a firm belief in the inquality of individuals (ie- some people are born to rule, others to follow). Examples of dysfunctional bossist attitudes are:
While any of these might be correct in a particular situation, they become dysfunctional when the bossist refuses to investigate the facts and these beliefs are accepted at face value.
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| The Bossist Manifesto | |||
| Mafia mentality |
The Mafia is an archetypal example of a bossist culture that has flourished within modern societies. It has an unwritten code that is able to be passed on from generation to generation. Former US Federal Narcotics Bureau investigator John. T. Cusack outlined the Mafia code as follows:
Dysfunctional bossist attitudes are easily translated into Mafia-script and this can be seen as the self-talk of the sadistic, malignant bossist:
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Examples of Bossism
Jerry is national sales manager. He has been blowing out the budget with non-business hotel and junket bills to the point where the state managers had to lodge a protest to explain why the sales budget was being distorted. Higher management assured them at a public meeting that the matter had been dealt with. Jerry promptly sacked the leading state manager.
Ed is in charge of a key government department. Not much has been heard about his policies lately, as the news coverage has all been about allegations that he spends his day trying to grope the female researchers and policy assistants in the photocopy room.
Bill doesn't have a university degree. He is in charge of a technical section but does not have a technical background. He compensates for this by not having any management training. He believes his people skills are shown by the increasing number of formal harassment complaints and claims being lodged in the section.
When Amanda returned to her Government Department following some time off for stress, Human Resources hired corporate lawyers who advised that Amanda could only be got rid of if the organisation could find no work for her. For the next three years HR moved Amanda from one temporary placement to another, ensuring in each placement she had no work to do. When Amanda got to understand the work in the new area enough to initiate work herself, she was transferred elsewhere. After three years of this treatment, Amanda filed a lawsuit. In their determination to destroy Amanda, the organisation’s management wasted at least $ 1/3 million on lawyers and on paying Amanda while sabotaging her work. If they had allowed Amanda to work, she might have contributed to their organisation and eventually gained another position in another organisation – to everybody’s satisfaction.
Bill is constantly overworked and tells Joanne, the 2nd in charge of the section “I’d love to delegate some work to you, but I’m too busy”. Bill also claims the work is “too technical” for Joanne. Joanne is under-utilised and in protest does internet research for her night-time course and for property investment. She becomes acting in charge while Bill is away and finds there is much work she could have been doing all along. Three people from the Regional Offices approach her asking to be paid. Joanne had never met them and didn’t even know they were on staff as Bill has left no paperwork and deliberately kept her “out of the loop”. Bill has done the same to the three 2IC’s he had prior to Joanne, who also complained of under-utilisation. Senior management knows of the problem but never intervenes.
Kathy is near retirement. She hasn't actually seen a patient since the death threats from the last time, years ago, she actually tried. Doctors have lodged complaints because their referrals to Kathy's ward pile up until they can be cleared by student interns. The administrators' reply was to threaten the complaining doctors with defamation action.