Ignorance-Exposing Vulnerable Involvement, the Trust-Creating Practice that Makes Executives Job-Competent

Ignorance-Exposing Vulnerable

Involvement, the Trust-Creating Practice

that Makes Executives Job-Competent

Paper submitted to the 7th International Symposium onProcess Organization Studies,

24-26 June 2015, Helona Resort, Kos, Greece.Paper Code PROS-030

For thematic tracks: a) How are (micro) individual skills and competencesconstituted, maintained and changed in the context of (macro)organizational knowledge bases and capabilities? Or:b) How do processes of learning and knowledge management help

build and further refine expertise, competence, and capabilities at the individual, group and organizational levels?

By Reuven Shapira, PhDThe Western Galilee Academic College, Acre, ISRAEL

[email protected] Mail address: Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, M.P.Hefer, ISRAEL 3881000.

Fax: 972-46320327. Phones: 972-4632-0597; 972-54220-9003.

Date: 20.4.2015

mailto:[email protected]

Ignorance-Exposing VulnerableInvolvement, the Trust-Creating Practice

that Makes Executives Job-CompetentAbstract

Executive acquisition of job competence suffers from powertempting its use to conceal ignorance and incompetence as darksecrets and survive in jobs by abuses and subterfuges. Suchcompetence requires sensitivity to the unique contours ofcircumstances, knowing how to arrive at a well-based judgment inone’s job which inter alia requires local know-how and phronesis(Greek for practical wisdom) held by practitioners of jobs whicheven an insider is ignorant as s/he advanced in otherunits/functional domains and took charge of them due topromotion. Ignorance-exposing vulnerable involvement indeliberations is necessary to create mutual trust with employees,to learn and to achieve competent functioning but this requiresjeopardizing one’s authority until learning and becoming jobeffective. A multi-case study of five automatic processing plantsby a management-educated and experienced semi-nativeanthropologist untangles that only a few of their outsiderexecutives, 4 of 27 studied, chose such involvement and becamejob-competent. As import of outsiders is common at present, thisproblem calls for solutions which the article suggests besidesrecommendations for further study.

Keywords: Executive job-competence, ignorance exposure, vulnerable involvement, outsider executives, multi-caselongitudinal ethnography.

IntroductionWith the ‘practice turn’ in the social sciences, organizationstudies rediscovered the concept of practice, butorganizational ethnography missed which executives’ practicesmade them job-competent. Ample literature was devoted toeducating executives by management science theories andfindings but Shotter and Tsoukas (2014a) concluded that

...it is not the generalized knowledge of science that is required in prudently leading people and handling human affairs, but a special sensitivity to the unique contours of the circumstances in which leaders happen to operate each time. ...an ability to be guided, moment-by-moment, by contingent sensing as each new step brings us into new

Ignorance-Exposing Vulnerable Involvement Engenders ExecutiveCompetence 3

circumstances, where pre-established rules or recipes cannot, in principle, apply (p. 240).

They and other authors emphasize the decisiveness of tacitlocal know-how and phronesis acquired by practicing jobs (Bower,2007; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Khurana, 2002; Klein, 1998; Klein,2004; Orr, 1996; Schweigert, 2007; Shapira, 2013; Townley,2008):

practical wisdom and judgment, rather than seen as ‘things’ hiddeninside the mind, are best talked of, we suggest, as emerging developmentally within an unceasing flow of activities, in which practitioners are inextricably immersed (Shotter and Tsoukas, 2014b: 377).

Much research supports this; according to Schon (1983: 49)“our knowing is ordinarily tacit, implicit in our patterns ofaction and our feel for the stuff with which we are dealing”,and Flyvbjerg (2006: 362) suggested that learning “phronesisrequires experience” (original emphasis). Acquiring know-how andphronesis requires coping with tasks and challenges (Flyvbjerg,2006; Klein, 1998; Klein, 2004), they are “constituted andreconstituted as actors engaged in the world of practice”(Orlikowski, 2002: 249). However, Shotter and Tsoukas’s“inextricably immersed” assertion is problematic with regardto executives: due to their powers they can defend theirauthority and job by avoiding immersion in activities of whichthey are ignorant (e.g., Blau, 1955), while due to promotionor because of outsiderness (Karaevily, 2007) they take chargeof functions/units which they did not experience and havelittle if any of their tacit know-how and phronesis. Researchalluded to acquiring managerial skills with advancement fromthe ranks (e.g., Peterson and Van Fleet, 2004) but not toexecutives’ ignorance of unfamiliar functions/units,inexperience of their problems, lack of feel for their stuffand no knowledge of their staffs’ expertises, especiallyoutsiders (Bower, 2007; Khurana, 2002; Johnson, 2008; Shapira,1995b); they may learn the processes by which the products orservices are produced, but might not learn how these processesfunction (Brown and Duguid, 2001). Such ignorance of localtacit knowledge precludes honing broader abilities intosharper ones required for effective management (Wagner, 2002).To learn the tacit know-how and phronesis of unfamiliarfunctions/units, executives must engage, indwell andassimilate in employees’ problem-solving (Fine, 2012;


Gobillot, 2007; Meyer, 2010; Tsoukas, 2005: 149) becausemanagerial problems are mostly incorrectly formulated and/orill-defined, lacking essential information, and have no singlecorrect answer; only cooperative efforts with knowledgeablelocals generate correct formulations and solutions (Bennis,1989: 17-19; Wagner, 2002: 50-1). However, locals’ sincere cooperation with and help for the

executive’s learning requires her/his ignorance-exposingtrust-creating vulnerable involvement (Guest, 1962; Zand,1972; e.g., Bennis, 1989: 17-19; Grove, 1996: 144; Guest,1962: Ch.4; Kanter, 1977; 33; Semler, 1993; Shapira, 2013).Others also indicated that trustful relations between managersand employees are essential for knowledge sharing, learning,problem-solving and decision-making (Deutsch, 1962; Dore,1973; Heskett, 2012; Lee et al., 2010; Shapira, 1987; Snell,2001; Wang and Clegg, 2007). Unfortunately, ignorance exposurerequired to create trust diminishes one’s authority (Blau,1955), hence executives often avoid it, suffer mistakes andfailures and then use bluffs, abuses and subterfuges toconceal, camouflage and/or scapegoat others while concealingthese low-moral deeds as dark secrets, i.e., their veryexistence is secret, veiled on organizations’ dark side byconspiracies of silence (Dalton, 1959; Griffin and O’Leary-Kelly, 2004; Hase et al., 2006; Jackall, 1988; Linstead etal., 2014; Mehri, 2005; Shapira, 1995b). Only few studiedmanagerial ignorance but these few found it pervasive (Gannon,1983; Hogan and Hogan, 2001; Shapira, 1987; Smithson, 1989;Zbaracki, 1998). Studies of managerial effectiveness concur:Ineffective managers advanced careers more than effective ones(Luthans, 1988); among Gallup-studied 80,000 managers only afew were effective (Buckingham and Coffman, 1999), as found byothers as well (Baldoni, 2008; Curphy et al., 2008; Dalton,1959). Many ethnographers, from Collins et al. (1946) to Orr(1996) and Mehri (2005), uncovered managerial ignorance ofemployees’ know-how and phronesis required for effectiveness, asadmitted by corporate CEOs (Grove, 1996: 144; Robison, 2010).CEO Grove (1996: 144) hesitated much before admitting

ignorance of computer programming to Intel’s programmers whenhe wanted to learn it prior to leading a corporatetransformation which required such know-how. Otherexplanations for ignorance exposure by executives are habitus(Bourdieu, 1990), past successes (Shapira, 1995b, 2013) andprospects of successful learning due to referred expertise,expertise in other action domains that facilitates learning(Collins and Sanders, 2007; Fine, 2012). Ignorance-exposing


vulnerable involvement tends to lead to trust and learningcycles while ignorance-concealing detachment or seductive-coercive autocracy engenders distrust and ignorance cycles,summarized thus (Shapira, 2015):

Virtuous Trust and Learning Cycle versus ViciousDistrust and Ignorance Cycle Involvement habitus and/or much Detachment habitus and/or little pertinent pertinent expertises encourages expertises encourages executives’ choice of executives’ choice of ignorance- either detachment or coercive-seductive exposing vulnerable involvement autocratic control that conceales ignorance ↓ ↓ Ignorance exposure creates trust, Both choices causes distrust and secrecy openness, and knowledge sharing thatinhibites executives’ learning, causing that enhances executives’ learning, mistaken decisions, indecision, failures, correct decisions, and successes destructive conflicts and use of subterfuges ↓ ↓ Successes further the above process; The above furthers secrecy and learning executives gain interactional expertise inhibition; further failures and executives’ & job-competence,enhancing innovation incompetence encourages conservatism ↓ ↓The resulting innovation-prone high-trust Conservatism spares some mistakes but culture enhances learning from innovation causes others & minimal learning from them, mistakes, furthering executives learning brain-drain, and furthers a low-trust culture and encouraging more involvement whichencourages ignorance concealment


Burns and Stalker (1961) called high-trust innovation-pronecultures “organic” as against conservative-prone culturescalled “mechanic”. The former are rarer as suggest citedliterature on the rarity of effective managers, organizations’dark side, managerial careerism literature (Bratton andKacmar, 2004; Feldman and Weitz, 1991; Ficarrotta, 1988;Mosier, 1988; Wexler, 2006; Wilson, 2011) and corporateculture studies (Dore, 1973; Fox, 1974, 1986; Kanter, 1977;O’Mahoney, 2005; Ouchi, 1981; Mehri, 2005; Shapira, 1987). Executives may change a high-trust plant culture into a low-

trust one (Gouldner, 1954; O’Mahoney, 2005) or cause anopposite change (Guest, 1962; Semler, 1993). A CEO may shape ahigh-trust culture among executives (Geneen, 1984: 88-104;Harvey-Jones, 1988) but may not impact mid-levelers who mayconform to the field/organization’s gravity (Bourdieu andWacquant, 1992) or cope creatively with challenges (Heifetz,1995; Poulin et al., 2007) and shape different units’ cultures(Parker, 2000). Leader efforts to create high-trust culturesmay take years (Guest, 1962; Geneen, 1984; Washburn, 2011) andmay fail if employees are cynical, perceiving managers as “outof touch” with organizational realities and detecting a lackof integrity, discrepancies between their policies, discoursesand practices (Simons, 2002; Thoms, 2008). Then they dismissmanagers’ definition of the firm as a team and mistrust them(O’Mahoney, 2005). Thus, a major question is how can thissituation be changed so that executives will opt for ignorant-exposing vulnerable involvement, learn local know-how andphronesis and shape high-trust cultures which would minimizemismanagement and maximize efficiency, effectiveness andcreative innovation? Answering this question requires ethnography that explains

executives’ choice of trust-creating ignorance exposure or itsconcealment. Organizational anthropologists have untangled andexplained the learning and uses and abuses of local knowledgebut only at the shop floor level, not with regard toexecutives. For example Mehri (2005: 199), an engineer-ethnographer at Toyota’s R&D department, found its new managerto be “incompetent and spineless” and that the previousmanager put “his puppet in [his] place so he [could] keeppulling the strings from another department,” but untanglednothing about higher-ups’ role in the fiasco and whether theyavoided it to conceal ignorance. Untangling and explainingsuch a choice may not be ascertained by interviews as thesecontradict executives’ efforts to maintain false façades of


trust relations and dialogue with employees (Ciulla, 1998;Courpasson and Clegg, 2006: 327; Kieser, 2001; Thoms, 2008).Uncovering the truth behind executives’ façades of

trustworthiness and explaining it is not simple as localcultures differ widely concerning trust components ofbenevolence, competence, integrity and predictability (Dietzand Den Hartog, 2006). What may be considered an executive’sbenevolence in a paternalistic culture is perceiveddifferently in a non-paternalistic one (Cheng et al., 2004).What is grasped as competent management differs according totechnological sophistication and educational level of actors(Mehri, 2005). Consistent and predictable managerial decisionscreate trust in a routine, mature technology unit, but not ina novel technology and R&D unit (ibid; Webb and Cleary, 1994).Likewise perceived integrity is a function of societal andlocal norms that decide acceptable morality (Hosmer, 1995), aswell as of professional/generational/spatial norms, views andhabituses which are shaped by both present and earliercultures/sub-cultures (Bourdieu, 1990; Parker, 2000).Ethnography may explain executives’ choices and their

acquisition of local know-how and phronesis but regularparticipant observation as an employee is not enough; one hasto become an insider-outsider (Gioia et al., 2010) amongexecutives, untangling their levels of expertise (Flyvbjerg,2001: 10-16) and referred expertise (Collins and Sanders,2007), which impact their exposure/concealment choices(Shapira, 1995b, 2013). One must reveal how these impactpersonal strategies (Mintzberg, 1987) and for this s/he needsa managerial education (Yanow, 2004), managerial experience(Klein, 1998) and referred expertise that enables learning. Ihave both managerial education and experience in addition toanthropological ones, which by longitudinal semi-native multi-case anthropology enabled me to untangle and explainexecutives’ choices. I discerned the few who became job-competent by trustful vulnerable involvement from among theignorance concealing many others, explained the choices ofboth types by personal and contextual factors and explainedthe majority’s job survival and career advancement. Thishelped me propose solutions to this major problem.The article has four sections: 1. Longitudinal semi-native

anthropology: method and case studies. 2. PMs’ negative jobsurvival: concealing ignorance, “riding” on effective mid-levelers, seduction-coercion. 3. Managerial learning and job-effectiveness: trust-creating ignorance-exposing vulnerable


involvement. 4. Discussion, conclusions and plausiblesolutions.

1. Longitudinal Semi-Native Anthropology:

Method and Case Studies

Anthropologists have rarely studied executives (Welker et al.,2011) as they face a major barrier: they cannot be executivesin order to heed advice given by sages of old: “don’t judgeothers until you have stood in their shoes”; field-work as aline employee cannot achieve this, as exemplified by Mehri’s(2005) case. I overcame this barrier by a unique semi-nativelongitudinal anthropology: A native anthropologist studieshis/her own people and being too close to them s/he may adopttheir biased or particularistic views (Narayan, 1993), whileoutsider ethnographers often miss locals’ sincere views and/orother decisive insiders’ knowledge (Gioia et al., 2013: 19). Ihave avoided both by studying five automatic cotton gin plantsand their parent inter-kibbutz cooperatives (I-KCs), eachowned by dozens of kibbutzim and managed by their memberscalled pe’ilim (singular: pa’il). Like them I was a kibbutz member,had a similar managerial education and had experienced for 18years management at my kibbutz’s automatic processing plantthat partially resembled the five cotton gin plants studied,hence enjoying much referred expertise; I knew some pe’ilim evenbefore the study, as well as the kibbutz context thatsocialized them (Shapira, 2012; e.g., Fondas and Wiersema,1997); other organizational ethnographers mostly lacked suchknowledge (Yanow, 2004). I approached pe’ilim as their peer andinterviews often turned into openly discussed common problemsand I gained access to their documents. I entered the field toexplain its culture like other anthropologists, withoutchoosing a research design in advance as do other qualitativeresearchers (e.g., Creswell, 2007). I aimed at thickdescription (Geertz, 1973) based on variegated data collectedwhile participating in local life and sensing subjects’feelings, building mutual trust with informants and achievingopenness so that full, reliable, accurate and sincereinformation led to my analysis (e.g., Dalton, 1964; Fine,


2012; Marx, 1985; Orr, 1996).

The Focal Plant and the Case Studies

For five years I intermittently visited the focal Merkaz high-capacity automatic cotton gin plant (a pseudonym, as are allnames hereafter) and its I-KC’s nice, well-kept industrialpark, during which I held both many casual talks and lengthyopen interviews of up to an hour and a half with 168 currentand former plant managers (hereafter PMs) and staff plus 24executives of its parent I-KC, both pe’ilim and hired employees,as well as cotton growers, some of them more than once(interviews recorded in writing; many were home interviewswith a protocol of 565 folio pages). Intensive participantobservation was made as a shift worker along the focal plant’s3.5 month high season when it operated non-stop 24/7 andincluded visits to the other shifts. My registrar job enabledme some writing during the shift and further details wereadded after it, resulting in 791 pages observation journal.Then I toured four other gin plants, observed their premisesand interviewed 63 present and past executives and managers(331 page protocol). The longitudinal ethnographying, withfree access to documents and 251 interviewees of all echelonsplus many informal talks with others, made it possible tothoroughly check all major information and assertions,avoiding outsiders’ naivety. It enabled thick descriptions ofmanagers’ practices (Geertz, 1973), judging them as if I stoodin their shoes. Moreover, I analyzed and re-analyzed my dataseveral times over the last 30 years, repeatedly returningfrom aggregate dimensions to 1st order concepts (Gioia et al.,2013).Merkaz had two processing units in some 2000 and 2500 square

meter halls full of large noisy machines connected by hugepipes and operated by some 240 electric motors of some 3000horse power. The two together processed 650-700 tons of rawcotton daily during the high season, September-December. Rawcotton was brought to the yard and then to processing units incompressed stacks of eight ton on 6 X 2.5 meter metalstretches which stood on 6 one-meter long iron legstransported by specially built tractor-pulled hydrauliccarriages. The main product, bales of quarter-ton cottonfibers, were stored in 3 stores, some 2000 square meters each,until shipped to spinning mills, mostly abroad, while theother product (seeds) was lorry-transported to oil extractionplants.


Merkaz’s permanent staff included 10 pe’ilim and 17 hiredemployees, supplemented by some 70 hired workers in the highseason, when operations continued 24/7. Seven pe’ilim managed theplant: the PM, his deputy, the technical manager (hereafterTM), his deputy, the stores manager, garage manager and officemanager. The plant was a part of Merkaz Regional EnterprisesI-KC owned by some 40 kibbutzim with some 12,000 inhabitantsand handling much of their agricultural input and output insix plants with some $US 350 million sales (e.g., Niv and Bar-On, 1992). It was administered by some, 200 pe’ilim and operatedby some 650 hired employees. Kibbutzim received uniformsalaries for pe’ilim’s work whose formal term of office was fiveyears, in accord with the supposedly egalitarian rotatzia(rotation; e.g., Gabriel and Savage, 1981) norm at kibbutzim,but senior pe’ilim violated it, retaining jobs for decades ormoving from one I-KC job to another (Shapira, 1995a, 2005). I commenced my research by interviewing the Merkaz CEO and 23

executives who portrayed themselves as servants of thekibbutzim, repeating the mantra: “The Regional Enterprises arethe extended arm of the kibbutzim.” However, I discernedobliviousness to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness,preference of growth and technological virtuosity to obtainpower, prestige, privileges and tenure (Galbraith, 1971).While 33 local kibbutz plants’ executives studied earliersought effectiveness, efficiency and innovation to succeed incompetitive markets, Merkaz plants had no direct competition,marketing their produce through national marketers and mostlysupplied by owner-kibbutzim obliged to use their services. Allten Israeli cotton gin plants belonged to regional I-KCs, andkibbutzim paid using a “cost plus” system known for itsencouraging inefficiency.I studied Merkaz cotton gin plant intensively and four other

gin plants less, as depicted. Early interviews andintermittent observations raised the suspicion that managerswere mostly ignorant of the plant’s uncertainty domains(Crozier, 1964) of technical, technological, operational andskilled manpower, while the “cost plus” system and efficientcotton growing by kibbutzim ensured plants’ viability despitecommon mismanagement. Coping with the problems of plants’uncertainty domains was learned exclusively on-the-job, henceI held mini-seminars with nationally renowned veteran ginningexperts, learned plants’ problems and acquired considerable“know-that” before learning “know-how” (Brown and Duguid,2001) by participant observation as registrar. Then I was soknowledgeable that technicians and foremen asked me why I


would not succeed their intelligent and educated but ignorantof ginning PM, a pa’il whom I called Shavit. I used thisknowledge for the less intensive study of the four other ginplants and found that only 4 of 27 outsider executivesstudied, three PMs and one CEO, were effective knowledgeablejob-competent. These findings corresponded with observationsby Arbiv, a past TM of Northern Gin Plant and top ginningexpert who became an R&D engineer at the US labs of theworld’s largest ginning equipment manufacturer:

The manager of the Valleys Gin Plant who also headed the national Gin Plant Association reached the conclusion that a good technical manager isjust a good mechanic and did a bad service to the entire industry. Take Gornitzki from the Valeys Gin Plant – he’s an excellent mechanic but during his first five years as technical manager he had no idea about cotton. Fortunately for him, he had two senior shift foremen who did knowsomething about it and saved him... And do you think he knows anything about it today? Did you see the automatic feeder he designed? Did you seehow he failed with the feeder he wanted to construct by himself to save US $20,000 and avoid purchasing it from an experienced manufacturer?

Observing this failure and a few others when visiting thefour plants, including the failed Gornitzki’s feeder,clarified the large gap between a good mechanic and aprofessional TM of high-capacity automatic gin plant. This gapwas indicated by another top-level expert based on his twentyyears of experience as the head of national cotton fibergrading laboratory, a graduate of a major professional schoolin Mississippi whose lab’s grading decided Israeli cottonfiber bales’ market value:

Only very few people knew the [ginning] trade... At each gin plant there was the administrative [plant] manager who did not last long, a pa’il whosecirculation decided continuity rather than the gin plant [needs], this was the worst defect, because until one learns the subject... a plant manager needs at least 5-6 years. The professionals who did the ginning, its changes and innovations were hired mechanics, often good mechanics who knew nothing about cotton – there was a huge gap between [knowing] the technical side and understanding cotton. The Gin Plant Association provided some training which was minimal, some [professional] Americans were invited to train these technicians, but often the latter did not have enough know-how to overcome the complex problems.

My data corroborated these portrayals of gin PMs and TMs butmy explanation of the etiology of common ignorance and


incompetence differs meaningfully. Before presenting it, hereis one example of stupid conservatism: in the late 1960s someUS gin plants developed a mechanized transportation system ofcotton from the fields by a specially equipped lorry calledMover which self-loads an eight-ton compressed stack of rawcotton, and then transports and unloads it into an automaticfeeder, which takes apart the stack and feeds the cottongradually into the ginning process. A delegation of Israelicotton growers and gin plant managers saw this transportationsystem at work in 1971 but the first Mover and an automaticfeeder were only installed in Israel in 1978. During the 1970sthe booming Israeli cotton industry ignored the US innovationand heavily invested in expanding the locally invented andbuilt tractor-pulled carriage transportation system. Merkazgrowers brought their raw cotton by about one hundred suchcarriages from as far as 50 kilometers away which meant a twohour drive as against a lorry’s 45-50 minutes. The moreefficient Mover system was costlier but it would have sparedsome 60 tractor drivers plus 12 workers at the two processingunits, hence it was economical as proved when it replaced theolder system in the early 1980s. Cost could not explain thesystem’s postponement as proved by much larger investmentsmade in other I-KC plants at the time (Shapira, 1978/9) whilecotton was the most profitable kibbutz crop; the onlyplausible explanation was executives’ ignorant/ stupidconservatism.The prime cause of conservatism due to ignorance/stupidity of

most PMs and TMs was the dysfunctional outsider CEOs’ rule:all 10 CEOs whom I studied in the 5 I-KCs were outsider pe’ilim“parachuted” to jobs, a term used in Israel for the directimport of high-status outsiders to executive offices; only oneof them, Dan of Northern I-KC, choose ignorance-exposingvulnerable involvement in the management of its gin plant andencouraged similar involvement and virtuous trust and learningcycles of its PMs and TMs, leading to excelling in bothefficiency and effectiveness (see below). The majority ofignorance concealing CEOs or their predecessorsinstitutionalized norms of rotatzia and “parachutings” whichserved their rule by legitimizing the import and replacementof pe’ilim as PMs and TMs according to their loyalty to the boss.Importees mostly followed in bosses’ footsteps, engenderingvicious distrust and ignorance cycles of secrecy, subterfuges,mistakes and failures. But total failures which might havedeterred such harmful practices prevented the import of pe’ilimrescuers who due to pertinent expertises and/or habituses


chose vulnerable involvement, created high-trust localcultures through virtuous trust and learning cycles andsucceeded. Successes empowered them (Klein, 1998), so thatignorant superiors who felt threatened, suppressed them, andthey left. New pe’ilim were imported, opted for ignoranceconcealment, failed, and were replaced by rescuer pe’ilim whosucceeded by trust and learning cycles, were empowered andsuppressed, and so on; this seesaw prolonged rule bydysfunctional ignorant CEOs and PMs (Shapira, 1987, 1995a,1995b, 2013, 2015, Forthcoming). The next section presentsvariants of “parachuted” PMs’ negative job survival strategiesof ignorance concealment and remaining job-incompetent.

2. PMs’ Negative Job Survival: Concealing

Ignorance, “Riding” on Effective Mid-

Levelers, Seduction-Coercion

PM Shavit exemplifies ignorance concealment by detachment andjob survival by “riding” on the successes of vulnerablyinvolved knowledgeable mid-levelers. In accord with the Jewishsaying “A mute fool is reputed to be wise”, Shavit concealed hisignorance, defended his authority and job and advanced hiscareer by detachment that allowed muteness; he caused manymistakes and failures from which we employees suffered.Detachment meant that he rarely visited the shop-floor, andwhen visiting rarely spoke to knowledgeable staff and neverdiscussed technical and operational problems with them. Heasked only trivial questions, listened only to escorting TMpa’il Avi and a loyalist ignorant foreman, ignoring comments ofexpert others and not trying to find out the truth when theycontradicted Avi and the loyalist. His rare comments exposedthat by his fourth year, he did not know certain ginningbasics I had learned in my first week of work (Shapira,Forthcoming). Shavit’s worst mistake was letting incompetent and ignorant

practical engineer pa’il Avi succeed similarly educated butknowledgeable and competent TM Thomas. Avi’s mistakes were sodetrimental to the plant’s functioning that both Shavit andAvi were ousted from their jobs, though only a year later, todefend their prestige and that of the CEO’s (Shapira, 2015).Shavit committed this awful mistake because both he and his


deputy Danton were ignorant of their own ignorance (Kruger andDunning, 1999) of ginning, missing their incompetence to judgeAvi’s ginning (in)competence, while Avi camouflaged hisignorance by building an expert image (Goffman, 1959) asThomas’s aide though called “technical manager”, combining itwith ingratiating Shavit which helped succeeding Thomas whenthe latter left frustrated days before my work season (below).The worst outcome of Avi’s incompetence was recurrent cloggingof the new SGH machine that halted the ginning process for 30-35 minutes every 2-3 hours when the process was running atfull speed throughout some half of my 3.5-month participantobservation, and some 2-4 times a day in the second half afterrepair of Avi’s major mistake. This halting was criticalbecause every hour of downtime meant that cotton growers hadto store 25 tons of raw cotton in the fields, adding both muchwork and costs. Downtime in that season was 32% versus lessthan 10% in most of Thomas’s seasons and the usual 10-12% atother plants. Below I will portray Northern Gin Plant duringthe decade of Gabi’s leadership, which excelled by having lessthan 3% downtime in most seasons.1 Thomas left frustrated due to Shavit’s other major mistake

caused by ignorance and an accompanying weakness. Thomas wasempowered by successes due to 5 years of vulnerableinvolvement that engendered trust and learning cycles and alocal high-trust culture helped by three other vulnerablyinvolved pe’ilim, becoming a known expert among Israel’s cottongin plants and then abroad, as efficiency and effectivenesssoared. Shavit did not interfere since the plant’s functioningseemed to prove his capability, but successful Thomas becamedominant in managerial decisions at the expense of Shavit’spower. When Thomas proposed developing and building anoriginal automatic cotton-feeder at one third of American firmprices, $US 80,000 instead of $US 250,000, Shavit felt thatthis was too good to be true, missing that Thomas’s inventioncombined well-versed technologies hence chances of failurewere minimal. For three years he delayed it by red tape withthe CEO’s backing to tame Thomas and his supporter deputy PMDanton. But Shavit and his ignorant backer CEO whom I neversaw on the shop-floor throughout my observations despitecontinuity of the SGH fiasco, missed the probable exit offrustrated Thomas. During these three years other gin plantsordered US-made feeders while if Thomas’s feeder had been

1 Data was collected from plants’ official publications and interviews with managers.


timely installed these plants would probably have followedMerkaz, Thomas would have gained prestige and remained withShavit, “riding” on his successes. But ignorance failedShavit: he did not forecast Thomas’ leaving and lacking a moresuitable successor Avi took the helm, failed miserably beforemy eyes and he and Shavit lost their jobs.2

Outsider executives mostly chose such detached “riding” oneffective mid-levellers, but some of them survived longer onthe job by a variety of strategies such as allowing mid-levellers more discretion that enhanced trust (Fox, 1974) butonly in the technical and operational domains whileautocratically dominating other domains. For instance,detached PM Moav established Merkaz at the age of 61 with some30 years experience in treasuring and managing the treasurydepartment of a large commercial I-KC (some 1500 employees)and close ties with the CEO, his brother-in-law. He found twoenthusiastic middle-age deputies, Yaakov and Aharon, both ex-managers of kibbutz cotton branches for whom the plant was anextension of their branches, and they established and ran ithelped by experienced but uneducated TM Muli. Muli taught themginning basics, and their vulnerable involvement plusconscripting certified practical engineer Levi who followedthem, enhanced their expertise. Yaakov became the plant’shighly trusted de-facto leader but he suffered from Moav’sconservatism and stingy policy that minimally remuneratedcommitted effective expert employees, favouring ineffectiveloyalists and causing brain-drain and turnover. One loyalistwas a “two way funnel” (Dalton 1959: 232) who supplied Moavwith information about what was going on at the plant whileinforming employees about Moav’s views. When Moav completed afive-year formal term and a year after reaching retirementage, although everyone agreed that Yaakov as the plant’s realleader should replace him as the CEO admitted in an interview,he nevertheless rejected Yaakov and Aharon’s demand for Moav’ssuccession, satisfied with his staunch loyalty and the plant’sseemingly effective functioning. Then Aharon left frustrated,Yaakov did so two years later, and uneducated Muli managedoperations while Moav imported a young pa’il as deputy, as ifsuccession would take place after his grooming but in fact wasdelayed for another two years. Thus, “riding” on mid-levellers, Moav’s ignorant stingy mediocrity lasted 10 years. Of the 21 PMs studied or known from informants, 3 were job-

2 Shavit soon found another managerial job in which he behaved differently and succeeded for a long period.


effective due to vulnerable involvement and 4 chose seductive-coercive autocratic stupidity: although they learned more thandetached PMs they suffered employees’ animosity, engenderingsecrecy, bluffs, abuses and other subterfuges (Dalton, 1959;O’Mahoney, 2005; Web and Cleary, 1994). They often failedworse than the detached PMs. For instance, Merkaz’s PM Yuvalremained only 4 years despite a formal term of five. He ruledby “parachuting” pe’ilim with minimal referred expertise as hisloyal deputies rather than promoting educated qualifiedginning experts highly trusted by employees (Gouldner, 1954),concerned of their empowerment by promotion and more successes(Ciulla, 1998; Klein, 1998). He interfered autocratically indeliberations, minimally listened to experts and madeamateurish and foolish decisions that caused animosity,distrust and secrecy, which kept him job-stupid while seekingculprits rather than learning from failures (Gittell, 2000).He decided to replace the electricity system at a cost of someUS $300,000 (some US $900,000 in current prices) with animported system presented by the importer and a colludingengineer as state-of-the-art, but it failed and was replaced,doubling the cost. The chief electrician warned of a bluff: Nosuch systems were used in Israel since they had already beentried, failed and were replaced. But autocracy, secrecy andhis and deputy pe’ilim’s ignorance failed Yuval. All outsider PMs who chose ignorance concealment caused

distrust and ignorance cycles that engendered stupidity,mistakes and failures. The only three PMs of the 21 studiedwho learned and functioned effectively risked their authorityby ignorance-exposing vulnerable involvement that createdtrust and learning cycles and, helped by similar TMs andknowledgeable technicians, created local high-trust cultures(Shapira, 2013, 2015).

3. Managerial Learning and Job-Effectiveness: Trust-

Creating Ignorance-Exposing Vulnerable Involvement

As mentioned, much research indicates that trustfulrelationships are essential for knowledge sharing, learning,problem-solving, decision-making and innovation as alsosuggested by the above incompetence cases; whether practicingdetachment or seduction-coercion, PMs engendered distrust andignorance cycles. However, research also indicates the


elusiveness of learning-enhancing high-trust cultures(Shapira, 2013), requiring anthropological study ofexecutives’ practices to explain trust and learning cycles.Ignorance-exposing vulnerable involvement is a primerequirement that proves one’s trust in others’ benevolence,but other trustful practices are also needed, i.e., proofs ofintegrity and predictability (Dietz and Den Hartog, 2006) andmaking “morally correct decisions and actions based upon theethical principles of analysis--that recognizes and protectsthe rights and interests of others… [In an] ethicallyjustifiable behavior… the interests of society take the degreeof precedence that is right, just, and fair over the interestsof the individual” (Hosmer, 1995: 399). However, societal,communal, and organizational interests may differ, and what isright, just and fair also depends onprofessional/generational/spatial norms and group/subjectiveviews (Parker, 2000). These views and expectations areimpacted by actors’ habituses which have been shaped by bothpresent and earlier cultures/sub-cultures. Competitive marketsserve societal interest in efficient firms but market forcesruin trust (Gouldner, 1955: 160-2) and encourage hierarchieswhich tend to cause distrust (Costa and Bijlsma-Frankema,2007) as Fox (1974: 14) explains:

When we bind a man with rules that minimize his discretion… hemay… perceive the constraints as indicating that we do not trusthim, in which case he is likely to reciprocate with distrusttowards us. …these dynamics …abundantly displayed …in the fieldof work, where the few make decisions… [for] the many. [Decide]objectives, the types of means employed, and the distribution offinancial rewards, status, and other things men value. …some menare included in, and others are excluded from, the moreimportant decision-making processes. Some... see themselves astrusted; other see themselves as distrusted.

Those who are trusted and included in decision-makingprocesses have to “provide relevant, comprehensive, accurateand timely information… for problem-solving efforts… have lessfear that their exposure will be abused,… and… have less needto impose controls on others” (Zand, 1972: 230-1). Trust tendsto mutuality and creates ascending spirals: Ego’s signalingtrust, for instance, by sharing information, is reciprocated


by Other’s imparting his know-how; as Other provestrustworthiness Ego furthers trusting acts such as allowingOther more discretion (Fox, 1974). Accordingly, leaders createhigh-trust cultures by open and sincere communication and byallowing employees discretion that enhances autonomy,competence, participation in problem-solving and relatedness(Guest, 1962; Shapira, 1995b; Weibel, 2007; Whitener et al.,1998). In these cultures employees are largely motivated bytrust of and consent with officers who behave ethically andmake morally correct decisions, while communicating goals towhich employees tend to commit themselves. They promote thesegoals, prove their integrity by minimal use of seductive andcoercive means, and demonstrate benevolence by caring foremployees long-term interests such as tenure, resulting insharing of knowledge, effectiveness, adaptability andinnovation (DeTienne et al., 2004; Fox, 1974; Gillespie andMann, 2004; Guest, 1962; Ouchi, 1981; Semler, 1993; Snell,2001). Let me demonstrate these in the few cases of vulnerablyinvolved PMs.

High-Trust Culture of Excelling Vulnerably Involved Northern

Gin PMs

After studying Merkaz I studied four other plants byinterviews and observations of 8 PMs, 5 CEOs and 50 of theirrole partners, and through these interviews and documents Ialso acquired information on 10 additional PMs. Of all 21 PMsstudied only one, Gabi of the Northern Gin Plant, learnedginning thoroughly by vulnerable involvement helped by apractical engineering education and mechanical experience andencouraged by the high-trust culture created by his vulnerablyinvolved predecessor, the pa’il who founded the plant butlearned ginning less than Gabi lacking mechanical knowledge.He participated in installing equipment and running a trialoperation, was vulnerably involved in major problem-solvingefforts, enlisted qualified staff and cared for its members’personal needs, not only fair salaries contrary to Moav’sstingy policy but other needs as well. For instance, a youngpromising technician who later became the second TM decided tomarry his fiance but they could not find an apartment in thenearby town; when interviewed 20 years later he remembered thePM using his ties in the dominant Mapai party and personallybegging officials until finding an apartment. Gabi continued


this caring policy but due to referred expertise he involvedhimself more in the staff’s problem-solving beside hired TMArbiv. Northern plant excelled all Gabi’s nine years untilsuccession, not only attaining less than 3% downtime in mostseasons but also on all other efficiency and effectivenessmeasures, primarily fiber quality which was cotton growers’prime concern as it decided fiber prices. The other nineIsrael’s gin plant managers acknowledged Gabi’s excelling andchose him as their Association head and representative vis-a-vis the authorities. I did not witness his management, coming to Northern years

after his succession and leaving his kibbutz, frustrated bythe region kibbutzim’s choice of a new I-KC’s CEO who replacedcommitted effective plant managers with his ignorant low-moralcareerist loyalists. I interviewed 12 of Gabi’s role partners,including two CEOs, two of his successors and their CEOs, aswell as Gabi twice at length, since he knew a lot about othergins’ PMs. He eagerly reviewed my data on Merkaz andelucidated technical questions left unanswered. Gabi’suniqueness is also explained by a habitus of involvement,retained from participative democratic management of hiskibbutz field crops branch, and by his referred expertise asan ex-mechanic of cotton equipment which all the other PMslacked. His thorough learning of ginning enabled him tonurture highly professional TMs and staff, not only Arbiv andhis successor but also others such as the deputy TM with whomI toured the plant. Successful Arbiv left for the US,attracted by a generous salary to the R&D lab of the world’slargest ginning equipment manufacturer. Then Gabi promoted toTM Arbiv’s deputy, whose dozen years’ experience made him amajor expert as Thomas and others testified. The latter’sdeputy did show me many small but significant technicalimprovements of the plant’s machinery which preventedblockings like those from which we suffered so often atMerkaz, proposed by operators and technicians, those whosuffered the hardships of coping with blockings. Gabi, the TMsand Gabi’s vulnerably involved successor, encouraged staff’sseeking and making such improvements, unconcerned thatemployees empowered by successes would diminish theirauthority, testifying to the trustful culture. Gabi, hispredecessor and this successor, continued this culture bybeing “socialized leaders”, unlike most of the PMs who were“personalized leaders” (Poulin et al., 2007); in their actionsand decisions “the interests of society t[ook] the degree ofprecedence that [wa]s right, just, and fair over the interests


of the individual” (Hosmer, 1995: 399). Gabi did not make a turnaround like Guest’s (1962: Ch.4)

outsider car plant manager or like Elena Kagan at Harvard LawSchool (Washburn, 2011), but his success resembled theirs andThomas’s at Merkaz (below) as it achieved continuouscollaborative learning, problem-solving and innovating effortswhich he led while others contributed significantly (Bennis,1989: 17-19). Problems were solved one by one, often requiringcreative innovations that used others’ improvement motivation.For instance, a prime goal was better fiber quality and amajor factor was giving each 8-ton stack different dryingtreatment according to varied raw cotton humidity in additionto noticing the changing air humidity and heat.3 This requiredmeasurements of each stack, a time consuming task which Inever saw anyone doing at Merkaz where drying treatment wasdecided intuitively when raw cotton was processed, meaningthat often about one-third of the stack was processed beforethe operator changed boilers to suit its humidity. Gabiconcluded that since fiber quality was in the interest ofcotton growers they would do it; he bought and gave eachgrower a hygrometer and each stack was brought to the plantyard with predetermined humidity, helping operators greatly.Moreover, this practice taught everyone that the plant’smission is to best serve the cotton grower’s interest inhighest fiber quality, one explanation how Northern’s fiberquality was almost always the best in Israel as its proudinterviewees emphasized. Arbiv for instance said:

The first PM infused this into our blood and Gabi continued. My successor[TM] may now cause riots about salaries, but when it comes to discussing the plant what’s best for the cotton will always receive the highest priority.

Gabi was nominated to his job by CEO Dan, himself avulnerably involved highly trusted executive, contrary to nineother I-KC CEOs on whom I have information. I did notinterview Dan but Gabi and others testified to hisconsiderable involvement and lack of any attempt to distancehimself from lower echelons; his involved backing wasessential because Gabi used unconventional practices. Forinstance, almost all plants imported pe’ilim to the TM job, likeAvi and Gornitzki, while Gabi retained hired TM Arbivnominated by his predecessor and when he left Arbiv’s hired3 In some 35º Celsius November days with 10-15% humidity, Merkaz operators did not lit the furnace to dry the raw cotton .


deputy became TM. Gabi was not concerned of their empowermentby successes due to both his own competence of which everyonewas aware and to the high-trust culture in which “what’s bestfor the cotton will always receive the highest priority” andno one’s job success would make him forget this dictum towhich three consecutive PMs and two consecutive TMs adhered.Other plants mostly did not adhere to such a dictum rather topower politics in which one’s power served one’s owninterests, though camouflaged as serving the plant’s interest,which was suspected but secrecy prevented knowing. Gabiprevented such low morality by trustful practices; his wordswere followed by deeds, proving his integrity (Simons, 2002)as he rewarded commitment to the fiber quality goal bypromotion and remuneration. He and employees “constituted andreconstituted” ginning know-how and phronesis by “engaging theworld of practice” (Orlikowski, 2002: 249), successfullyhoning knowledge assets into sharper resources aimed at theplant’s prime goal (e.g., Wagner, 2002). Their superbexpertise untangled lengthy repeated interviews with Gabi andthe two TMs.4 Gabi’s trust in the two was evident when he tookthem to professional meetings of gin PMs and TMs in which theywere the only non-pe’ilim present, a deed aroused bittercriticism of both Gabi and his successor by other PMs. WhenGabi’s successor was replaced by a detached pa’il the latterstopped this practice, which enhanced the TM and his deputy’sexpertise by hearing American experts lecturing on state-of-the-art ginning. All these findings point to the critical role of trust-

creating ignorance-exposing vulnerable involvement inengendering a high-trust culture in which executives achieveeffective job functioning. However, the creation of such alocal culture requires the collaboration of mid-levellers.This untangles the analysis of practices that led Merkaz’s TMThomas to professional excelling.

TM Thomas Excelled due to Practices that Nurtured a Local

High-Trust Culture

The case of TM Thomas exemplifies managerial trustfulpractices which accompanied vulnerable involvement andproduced a local high-trust culture that enhanced effectiveplant functioning and innovation. Northern PM Gabi continued

4 Arbiv was interviewed twice on visits to Israel.


his predecessor’s shaping of such a culture, but Thomas faceda failing low-trust culture shaped by autocratic ignorantYuval. His success in changing it further points to thepivotal role of executives/managers’ choice of practices inthe acquisition of job competences. As mentioned, Thomas (aged 35) rescued Merkaz by replacing

failing Avi as TM, although formally he was called the “SecondTM” and Avi retained his formal status to serve the bosses’power interests (Shapira, 2015). Thomas was an experiencedmechanic of agricultural machinery and a garage manager; hisvulnerable involvement continued a 18-year habitus ofrepairing machines by diving into their bellies (Harper, 1987)and learning their secrets in a community of practitioners(Orr, 1996). He had done this from the age of fourteen, duringhigh school, three hours daily (e.g., Pearlman, 1938: 151).Experienced in repairing cotton machinery he enjoyedpsychological safety (Edmondson, 1999), did not worry aboutcoping with the plant’s technical problems, while a kibbutzgarage habitus of consulting others before deciding complexmechanical questions encouraged vulnerable involvement inginning practitioners’ problem-solving efforts, askingquestions and making suggestions that exposed both knowledgeand ignorance and enhanced his learning. However, his self-assurance that encouraged involvement also

enhanced conflicts with two senior veteran technicians, one ofwhom was Levi the informal deputy TM considered by allemployees heir apparent of TM Muli while the other was Levi’saide. Avi’s replacing Muli, failing and imported Thomasreplacing him frustrated the two who expected promotion andenflamed clashes with Thomas for a year and half until theyleft. Looking back on these clashes Thomas admitted makinggreenhorn mistakes which could have been avoided had he notbeen “parachuted” as TM, hurrying to the rescue of the failingplant but entering and learning ginning as a deputy to aknowledgeable TM. On the other hand the critique of the twochallenged his expertise and sensitized him to his own ginningknow-how limits, encouraging involvement, working 15-18 hoursa day in the high season and learning tacit knowledge bothfrom his own experience (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Klein, 1998) andfrom employees who shared know-how and phronesis with him, movedto trust him due to his proven commitment to tasks (Zand,1972). Regretting the clashes with the two veterans he becamemore democratic, listened more to expert locals, checked moreproblems on the spot, helped solve them and gained genuinefeedback (Jo and Joo, 2011; Semler, 1993; Shapira, 2008). His


ample mechanical know-how enhanced communication and helpedhim solve problems that created ascending virtuous trustspirals as he trusted employees and allowed them discretion(Fox, 1974). Then experts exposed more secrets that furtheredhis expertise, he made wiser decisions that enhanced theirtrust, and this cycle continued, creating an innovative-pronehigh-trust culture (Geneen, 1984: Ch. 4; Haslam et al., 2010:Ch. 4; Heskett, 2012: Ch. 6). He became a servanttransformational leader (Burns, 1978; Greenleaf, 1977;Sendjaya et al., 2005) and a leading ginning expert in Israel.Like Arbiv, he was invited to join the US R&D department ofthe world’s leading ginning equipment manufacturer butdeclined the invitation for personal reasons. An additional major factor in Thomas’s successful learning

was the support for his leadership by deputy PM Danton and twoother involved pe’ilim, the chief electrician and the garagemanager. Danton was Thomas’s key supporter in the three-yearconflict with Shavit over the automatic feeder; the tworelated to Shavit as an alien ignorant authority to bemanipulated to minimally hurt the plant’s operations andmaintenance, which they managed. This collaboration of fourvulnerably involved pe’ilim transformed the low-trust shop-floorculture that Thomas found when coming into a local high-trustculture in which know-how and phronesis were learned byreflection-in-action (Schon, 1983), solving problems in acommunity of practitioners that created an “us” feeling(Haslam et al., 2011). This had happened both on the shopfloor while coping with failed/broken machines and on thebenches in the shade in front of the offices where mostlyDanton who was in charge of yard operations and lessfrequently Thomas congregated with hired employees. Withoutprior knowledge, it was impossible to discern managers fromforemen and workers, all wore dirty working clothes; only ifone arrived towards the end of a discussion one could haveseen that Danton or Thomas concluded what had to be done andall departed to do it. Most prior discourse was egalitarianand included an occasional dirty joke by a worker thatsometimes pinned down a manager or foreman. Less frequently,the electrician and the garage manager dropped by, whileneither distrusted Shavit nor even more distrusted Aviparticipated in these meetings.Thomas was seemingly less intelligent than Avi and Avi had 10

years’ experience in managerial jobs versus Thomas’s 5 years,but Avi failed and Thomas excelled because he enjoyed trustand learning cycles which Avi did not; their contrasting


practices clearly explained the large difference, supportingthe explanation of success by three Northern PMs and Moav’stwo deputies.

4. Discussion, Conclusions and Plausible

Solutions

A semi-native multi-case anthropological study of outsider-managed automatic processing plants supports the literature’semphasis on the decisive role of local tacit know-how andphronesis for executives’ job-competence. Their acquisitionprimarily explains the ignorance-exposing vulnerableinvolvement in practitioner communities’ problem-solving thatengendered virtuous trust and learning cycles which madeexecutives job-competent with contributory expertise (Collinsand Evans, 2007). Outsider executives mostly chose ignorance-concealing detachment or autocratic seduction-coercion,causing vicious distrust and ignorance cycles, whileoutsiderness (Karaevli, 2007) impacted choices: the majoritylacked pertinent local knowledge and interactional andreferred expertises which could have promised learning andjob-effectiveness. Other major factors were career advanceprospects without ignorance exposure and/or such habituseswhile minor factors were intelligence, formal education andother personal traits, in accord with critique of leadershipstudies’ competency paradigm (Carroll et al., 2008). Authority-defending ignorance concealment prevented mutual

trust with knowledgeable employees, shattering sharing oftheir know-how and phronesis essential for executives learningand functioning, but ignorant executives mostly retained theirauthority and jobs and advanced despite job incompetence by“riding” on mid-levelers’ successes. Many of the lattercreated trust and learning cycles and high-trust innovation-prone local cultures by vulnerable involvement and cooperativerelationships with like-minded peers and subordinates who wereallowed much discretion for problem-solving (Fox, 1974).Employees shared their know-how and phronesis acquired by hardwork and learning from experience only with trustworthysuperiors whose ignorance exposure proved a genuine wish tolearn and solve problems for the common good. Only socializedleaders committed to organizational goals, and notpersonalized leaders (Poulin et al., 2007), were trusted,


effective and innovative; personalized ones often concealedtheir ignorance while vicious distrust cycles retained it.Contrary to kibbutz socialist ideology, I-KC practicesencouraged the latter by promotion largely decided by tieswith and loyalty to higher-ups rather than by successfulfunctioning, while the rotatzia norm shortened terms and made thelearning of local knowledge less worthwhile (Gabriel andSavage, 1981; Shapira, 2008, Forthcoming). In addition, otherI-KCs relieved executives from some functions which peers haveto cope with in common firms, enabling retention of jobs andadvancing careers despite dysfunction and failures.Incompetence was prevalent among outsider executives, up to

85%: only 4 of the 27 studied were vulnerably involved inpractitioner communities’ problem-solving, learned locals’languages (Collins, 2011) and acquired interactional expertiseuntil reaching job-competent contributory expertise (Collins &Evans, 2007). They led their plant, Northern, to excel overall others by a high-trust innovation-prone local culture(i.e., Burns and Stalker’s [1961] “organic”). All the restconcealed ignorance, mostly avoided being “inextricablyimmersed” in “an unceasing flow of activities” in which“practical wisdom and judgment” developed (Shotter andTsoukas, 2014b: 377), while a few did become immersed butautocratically, also engendering vicious distrust andignorance cycles that kept them job-incompetent and failedthem. Detached ones could “ride” on the successes of mid-levelers because 7 of the 10 TMs studied were vulnerablyinvolved knowledgeable.5 The large difference of 70% of TMs whosucceeded by trustful involvement versus only 15% ofexecutives, was not a sampling bias, as these statisticsinclude all PMs and TMs of the five plants plus half of the,CEOs that is almost half the population. Moreover, it includesthe two plants, Northern and Southern, known in the industryas the best managed, thus the 5 plants sampled were above theaverage in terms of executives’ job-competence. Different habituses, referred expertises and career prospects

explain the above difference: The 7 vulnerably involved TMscame from kibbutz minor managerial jobs, which included part-time manual work, hence habituating vulnerable involvement;like Thomas they enjoyed much referred expertise thatencouraged their choice of such involvement. But theirprospects for further career advancement in the kibbutz field

5 Details of these executives, their TMs and other mid-levelers will be presented in a book I am writing.


were meager and hence they tried to succeed in their presentjobs which could have gained promotion outside the field likeArbiv’s and the offer to Thomas. PMs and CEOs, on the otherhand, came mostly from full-time managerial jobs in verydifferent action domains, habituated either detachment orseductive-coercive involvement, had minimal referred expertiseand no interactional expertise, while the kibbutz field withits hundreds of I-KCs promised managerial career advancementor at least similar status elsewhere, provided one did notsuffer awful failures like that of Yuval’s electricity system,maximal failures like that of Shavit with the SGH which withpatrons’ help could beconcealed/camouflaged/scapegoated/forgotten, as did Shavit andmany others (Shapira, 1987, 2005, 2008, 2013; e.g., Buckinghamand Coffman, 1999; Curphy et al., 2008; Luthans, 1988). According to managerial careerism and managerial ignorance

literatures cited, only a minority became executives due tosuccessful learning and job-effectiveness, and students missedthat promotion aggravated this problem by expandingexecutives’ jurisdiction to unknown units/functions anddiscouraging the ignorance exposure required for learning: thehigher one advanced, the smaller the part of required know-howand phronesis s/he brings with her/him and the larger the parts/he has to learn, especially in the case of an outsider(Bower, 2007), hence her/his larger chances of failure tolearn and to be ineffective (Shapira, 2015). This built-inignorance problem of executives accompanies added authority,prestige and power to defend high status by ignoranceconcealment, abuses and subterfuges such as blaming weakerothers for one’s mistakes, failures and wrongs (Hughes, 1958).Worse still, power encourages “riding” on subordinates’successes and appropriating their innovations’ prestige(Mehri, 2005). Often mid-levelers succumb to superiors’ lowmorality, become their loyalists, ingratiating them and usingother subterfuges. These make ignorance concealment ubiquitouswhile it is decisive: executives miss both essential knowledgeand their own ignorance (Kruger and Dunning, 1999), whichcauses fatal mistakes as they fail to discern experts fromfools and impostors (Kets De Vries, 1993) and tend to consultaccording to status and credentials which are often barelyrelated to expertise or even worse, according to ingratiation,falling prey to impostors. Nor do results ensure discerningimpostors without trustful relations and open communicationwith experts, while one’s own power interferes withdiscernment: Some employees fit their views to her/his,


seeking the rewards s/he controls, while knowledgeable viewsof others are often repressed by her/his views through themany ways that s/he impacts decisions (Heifetz, 1995). The PMs studied mostly emulated their appointers, CEOs who

mostly ruled I-KCs over time with no ignorance exposure nortrustful learning primarily because whenever a threat of totalfailure became imminent due to mistakes and failures ofignorant managers Thomas-like rescuers came from the kibbutzim(Shapira, 2015). But their successes were provisional as wasThomas’s; sooner or later their rising power was seen as amenace to superiors’ power, and they were suppressed and left.New outsiders were imported, mostly choosing concealment ofignorance and failed. Then came rescuers, succeeded, gainedpower, were suppressed, and left. This seesaw enableddysfunctional rule by ignorant oligarchic CEOs empowered bythe rotatzia norm (Shapira, 2005, 2008). One remedy could be newanti-oligarchic succession CEO norms. Succession encouraged by“Golden Parachutes” is mostly oligarchic; these are allottedindependently of a CEO’s functioning on the job (Vancil, 1987)with no say to non-director executives and managers who know,best whether s/he deserves generosity. Successes of democraticfirms (Erdal, 2011; Semler, 1993; Storey et al., 2014) suggestthat a democracy which includes knowledgeable insiders insuccession decisions side by side with directors can curboligarchic tendencies by periodic tests of trust in a CEO, sayevery four years like the reelection of US presidents.However, the many cases of successful leaders who managed tofunction effectively for more than eight years supportallowing executives more than two terms. This is plausible byallowing up to four terms for those trusted by extra largemajorities, over 67% for a third term and over 88% for afourth term (Shapira, 2013: 24). Second, the use of new yardsticks for executive selection can

minimize the number of those who opt for ignoranceconcealment: 1. Having, a habitus of vulnerable involvement aimed at learning local problems, 2. Having referred and interactional expertises that fit a firm’s major problems, 3. Previous successful trustful servant transformational leadership (Sendjaya et al., 2008). These yardsticks may also be useful for comparing insider

versus outsider candidates, but further study of theirrelative weight in foreseeing who among candidates will choosetrust-creating vulnerable involvement is in order. Research is


also required of the relative weight of the factors thatimpact this choice: 1. Involvement habitus, 2. Relevancy ofexpertises, 3. Previous leadership style, 4. Career prospectsof alternative choices, 5. Organizational contexts thatencourage/discourage each choice.A radical change of attitude to the study of competence

acquisition by executives is needed to further untangle, forinstance, how they acquire “special sensitivity to the uniquecontours of the circumstances in which [they] happen tooperate each time” (Shotter and Tsoukas, 2014a: 240). Besidethe factors studied here this sensitivity is seeminglyimpacted by personal histories and cultural contexts thusrequiring more longitudinal ethnographies; these can result inan organizational science that matters (Flyvbjerg, 2006). Suchstudies must be much longer and extensive than a usualorganizational ethnography, and they must be phronetic,seeking a concrete, practical and ethical answers to majortroubling questions concerning power-holders of one’s society,much as the Aalborg Project was for Flyvbjerg (2006) and thestudy of kibbutz for myself (Shapira, 2012).

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Documents

Ignorance-Exposing Vulnerable Involvement, the Trust-Creating Practice that Makes Executives Job-Competent