Not Enough Thick Organizational Ethnography for Penetrating Managers Careerism

Thick Description: A Field Explanation of

Outsider Managers’ Careerism through

Extensive Semi-Native Anthropology

Reuven Shapira, Ph.D

Sociology & Anthropology Dept., Western Galilee Academic

College, Acre, ISRAEL

Based on a paper presented in the 8th Organization Studies SummerWorkshop on the Day to Day Life of Cultures and Communities,

Mykonos, Greece, 25 May 2013

Mailing address: Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, Mobile Post Hefer 38810Israel

Phone: 972-4632-0597; Cell: 972-5422-09003. Fax: 972-4632-0327.E-mail: [email protected] Website:http://www.transformingkibbutz.com

Author Biography

Dr. Reuven Shapira is a senior lecturer of anthropology and

sociology at The Western Galilee Academic College in Acre,

Israel. He held various executive positions at his kibbutz, Gan

Shmuel and its factory, received Ph.D. in anthropology from Tel

Aviv University and lectured at various institutions of higher

education in Israel. His research interests are kibbutzim,

inter-kibbutz organizations, trust, leadership and gender. He

has authored three books, booklets for managers and numerous

scholarly articles in Hebrew and English. He is currently

writing a book on mismanagement and poor leadership in large

specialized organizations.

http://www.transformingkibbutz.com/

mailto:[email protected]

2 Thick Description: A Field Explanation of Outsider Managers’Careerism

Confirmation letter

I hereby declare that the submitted article is original and my

own creation, that it has not been published elsewhere and that

it is not under review for any other publication. I am solely

responsible for any errors of commission or omission in it.

Date: 14.2.2014

Thick Description: A Field Explanation of

Outsider Managers’ Careerism through

Extensive Semi-Native Anthropology

Abstract

Self-serving managerial careerism often causes serious

organizational malfunctioning but its problematic study renders

it elusive and has deterred research. Semi-native longitudinal

anthropological fieldwork at an Israeli automatic cotton gin

plant and its parent inter-kibbutz cooperative (hereafter IKC),

supported by less intensive ethnographies of four similar

plants, as well as by extensive ethnographying of their

context, the kibbutz field, managed to overcome research

barriers. Extensive fieldwork enables thick description,

explaining the prevalence of low-moral careerism among IKC

outsider managers by showing how the kibbutz field encouraged

career advance through loyalty to oligarchic patrons rather

than by performance. Mid-levelers who sought career advance by

performance prevented total failures by engendering trust and

learning cycles and effective high-trust local cultures. These,


however, enhanced the careers of ignorant careerist superiors.

As outsider executives are common today, the findings point to

the need for new measures to counter encouragement of

outsiders’ low-moral careerism by oligarchic organizational

fields and for further untangling of concealed careerism

through phronetic ethnographic research.

Keywords - Managerial careerism, Thick description, Semi-native

phronetic anthropology, Outsider executives/managers, High/low-

trust cultures, Vulnerable involvement/detachment.

Introduction

In view of the business scandals of the last decade, managerial

ethics has become a major topic of organization research and

teaching (Ailon, 2013; Gini, 2004; Rhode, 2006) while this is

not true of self-serving careerism, seemingly a prime root of

unethical practices. For example, in the 58 Sage management and

organization studies journals there are 966 article abstracts

that contain the word ‘career’ but only five contain either

‘careerism’ or ‘careerist’. However, low-moral careerism is

ubiquitous, depicted by Arendt (1963) as a common vice of mass

society. Careerists skilled at promoting themselves at the


expense of others are all too common (Bartton and Kacmar,

2004), and US military scholars extensively criticized

devastating officers’ careerism (Ficarrotta, 1988; Gabriel and

Savage, 1981; Mosier, 1988). Luttwak (1984, p. 200), for

instance, warned: ‘If careerism becomes the general attitude,

the very basis of [military] leadership is destroyed’, but it

seemed that neither this warning nor others resulted in any

change. According to ex-Marine Corps colonel Wilson (2011, p.

46)

...so many senior officers think that the military is all about getting

promoted and accumulating as many signs of rank and status as possible,

completed with a host of perks... [These careerists] are so prevalent

because bureaucracies are in effect designed by and for careerists

propagated by reams of regulations and layers of superfluous commands.

[Careerists] are promoted because of a zero defect record of playing it

safe, making no controversial decisions and requiring others to do the

same.

One explanation for the lack of change may be the growing

careerism among US elites: Feldman and Weitz (1991) found that

careerism grew among a US university’s MBA alumni from 1970s

graduates to 1980s graduates, Weissberg (2002) found widespread

careerism among US university administrators, and Starbuck


(2007, p. 24) observed that ‘careerism has been pervasive’ in

the booming business school environment. However, an additional

explanation for this lack may be the minimal non-military

research of careerism although it was found to be a stronger

predictor of job attitudes than salary and negatively

correlated with job involvement and company commitment (Feldman

and Weitz, 1991). Curtis (2009, p. 505) concluded that

careerism was ‘seldom conducive to clear thinking or original

thought’.

Feldman and Weitz (1991) defined careerism as advance by non-

performance-based means, but this definition seems too

restricted as exemplified by Geneen’s (1984, p. 78) advance

from a job with a $40,000 salary to Raytheon’s $100,000. Geneen

depicted this as a benign promotion to the position of

Raytheon’s chief financial officer due to his past performance

in a similar job, but this is questionable since the 250%

higher salary was achieved by convincing CEO Adams to combine

this function with production management, which Geneen had

neither studied nor ever performed. Adams may have been

convinced by impression management (Bratton and Kacmar, 2004),

so that only if Geneen avoided it and fully informed Adams


about his own incompetence can he be defined as a high-moral

non-careerist. Thus, the use of low-moral means for career

advance defines careerism (Ficarrotta, 1988), and Feldman and

Weitz’s (1991) use of non-performance-based means is just one

type of such low morality.

Low morality was ubiquitous in the US. Riesman (1950) decried

managers’ transition from serving the social good to pursuing

their own private ends at the expense of their employers and

communities. Dalton (1959) found that in three firms managers

achieved promotion mostly by nurturing social ties by joining

the right clubs or societies and by clique politics under

patrons’ auspices. Accordingly Luthans (1988) found a negative

correlation between US managers’ effectiveness and their career

success, and Baldoni (2008) and Curphy et al. (2008) found that

some half of US managers were incompetent. Buckley (1989) cited

US executives’ longing for ‘old-fashioned competence’ of

managers instead of star-seeking. Buckingham and Coffman (1999)

found only a few effective managers among the some 80,000

studied by Gallup in the US and elsewhere (e.g., Diefenbach,

2013; Dore, 1973; Kets de Vries, 1993; Poulin et al., 2007; Web

and Cleary, 1994).


‘Star’ careerists who ‘jumped’ from one firm to a higher

office in another were ubiquitous (Downs, 1966): 58% of US

executives were outside ‘jumpers’ (Campbell et al., 1995), as

were 33% of CEOs in the 500 S&P firms (Bower, 2007). A ‘jump’

required a façade (Goffman, 1959) of past successful

functioning, often achieved by low-moral concealment,

camouflaging and scapegoating others for own mistakes, wrongs

and failures (Dalton, 1959; Hughes, 1958; Jackall, 1988;

Maccoby, 1976; Web and Cleary, 1994). A rapid career advance

and a ‘star’ image may deter questioning of one’s real

competencies. US corporations often hired ‘star’ CEOs without

considering the relevance of their experience and expertise for

the job and many of them failed (Johnson, 2008; Khurana, 2002;

Tichy and Bennis, 2007, Ch. 2) or did not deliver on their

promises (Bower, 2007; Groysberg et al., 2006; Groysberg et

al., 2008).

However, do such promotions only bear witness to the

careerism of ‘stars’ or also to that of the nominating

directors? The latter often chose ‘stars’ to gain Wall Street’s

positive reaction, enriching stock-holders including themselves

(Groysberg et al., 2006; Khurana, 2002). Similarly, a low-moral


patron artificially elevated the credentials of loyal clients

to legitimize their promotion, which served his own career

advance (Dalton, 1959, p. 149). Or this case: An ‘incompetent

and spineless subordinate’ was promoted to department manager

at Toyota due to loyalty to a predecessor who [didn’t] ‘want to

give up power [but] wanted to have his puppet in place so he

[could] keep pulling the strings’ from another department

(Mehri, 2005: 199). A common low-moral trick is legitimizing

promotion by including in a manager’s resume only successes,

not failures which are blamed on weak others unable to defend

their name (Hughes, 1958) or are concealed as dark secrets

whose very existence is veiled by conspiracies of silence on

the dark side of organizations (Goffman, 1959; Hase et al.,

2006; Jackall, 1988), as in the Enron scandal and other

corporate frauds (Gini, 2004).

Not Thick Enough Two Classics of a Suspected Careerist

and a Non-Careerist

The above indicates that careerism is not only one’s own choice

but also that of others, and its explanation requires an

anthropological thick description for proper interpretation


(Geertz, 1973). Two classic ethnographies of outsiders’

promotions will clarify this requirement.

Gouldner’s (1954) outsider was seemingly a careerist college

graduate: without experience, of gypsum board plants and

underground mines he succeeded the knowledgeable manager of

such a plant and its mine, accepting the corporate headquarters

mission to ‘rationalize’ it. No explanation was given for the

headquarters’ decision and the manager’s choice. The outsider

used personalized leadership (Poulin et al., 2007) that eroded

employees’ trust by punishment-centered control that sought

culprits rather than learning from failures (Gittell, 2000),

imposing many prohibitions against former practices. He

replaced highly trusted veteran deputies with young college-

educated greenhorn outsiders like himself who became his loyal

supporters but aroused the animosity of locals. They denied the

outsiders vital information, causing erroneous decisions and

more use of coercive means in a descending trust spiral (Fox,

1974), culminating in a three-month wildcat strike that

shattered the plant’s functioning (Gouldner, 1955).

However, is this proof of careerism? The data provided in

Gouldner’s two books was unable to provide a definitive answer,


while research offered other possibilities: The outsider’s

suspicion of plausible locals’ disobedience encouraged

punishment-centered control (Kipnis, 1976); the outsider

conformed to US conventions (Buckingham and Coffman, 1999;

Gittell, 2000; Jackall, 1988; Kanter, 1977); he replaced local

deputies with better educated outsiders believing in their

superior competences required for rationalizing the plant.

Guest’s (1962) description was thicker, proving the

outsider’s performance-based advance: from a successful

production manager of one plant in the corporate division he

was promoted to plant manager to rescue another plant that

produced similar cars with the same technologies. The outsider

held much pertinent local knowledge that promised competent

solving of problems (Fine, 2012) as indeed had happened. Upon

taking charge he made the crucial move of declaring his trust

in the local staff (Whitener et al., 1998), and contrary to

their expectations and Gouldner’s case he did not replace

deputies by loyalist outsiders. He took a big risk, indicating

competence and servant transformational leadership (Burns,

1978; Graham, 1991; Greenleaf, 1977): He relied on staff under

whose control the plant failed by every measure, and he risked


his authority by vulnerable involvement in shop-floor problem-

solving (Mayer et al., 1995; Zand, 1972), visiting every

section of the 4,500 employee plant and, together with lower

echelons, solved problems (e.g., Kanter, 1977, p. 33; Shapira,

1995b). In this way and through other high-moral trustful

practices he shaped a high-trust high-performing innovative

culture (Burns and Stalker, 1961; Dore, 1973; Lee et al., 2010;

Ouchi, 1981) that transformed the plant into the best of the

division’s six plants. The detailed ethnography rules out other

possibilities such as success due to charismatic leadership;

his leadership was clearly non-charismatic and

transformational, in accord with Barbuto (1997).

However, even Guest’s thicker description did not fully

explain the outsider’s major choice of trusting unknown locals:

Was it a habitus from previous jobs (Obembe, 2012)? Can it be

explained by his much relevant know-how and phronesis, Greek for

practical wisdom, acquired by coping with tasks and challenges

(Flyvbjerg, 2006; Townley, 2002) from previous jobs that

ensured him psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) for

vulnerable exposure of ignorance of unique local problems,

resulting in trustful learning and solving (Deutsch, 1962;


Zand, 1972)? Trust and distrust are reciprocal and tend to

create either ascending or descending spirals (Fox, 1974; Mayer

et al., 1995; Vlaar et al., 2007). A new manager’s trusting of

subordinates tends to engender an ascending trust spiral

(Whitener et al., 1998) especially if s/he exposes his/her own

ignorance of local knowledge by vulnerable involvement aimed at

learning (Shapira, 2013; Zand, 1972). However, ignorance

exposure diminishes authority (Blau, 1955), which may be

regained only if s/he successfully learns and functions

(Gabarro, 1987; Watkins, 2003). Outsiders may avoid such

exposure in order to retain their authoritative image and gain

obedience by detachment and/or seductive-coercive involvement,

concealing ignorance as a dark secret, i.e., its very existence

is kept secret (Goffman, 1959). Such secrecy engenders

suspicions and distrust, deterring openness, willing

collaboration and knowledge sharing (Shapira, 1995b, 2013). The

outsider remains ignorant (Gouldner, 1954) and even if s/he was

not a careerist hitherto s/he may become so: the dire situation

pushes her/him to information abuse and other low-moral means

to defend job and advance career despite failures.

The contrary processes can be summarized concisely, thus


(Shapira, 2013, p. 17):

Virtuous Trust and learning Cycle versus Vicious

Distrust and Ignorance Cycle


Involvement habitus and/or much

Detachment habitus and/or little

relevant know-how and phronesis

relevant know-how and phronesis

↓ ↓ Involvement choice

Detachment/coercive involvement choice

↓ ↓ Vulnerable ignorance exposure

Concealing ignorance by these choices

causes an ascending trust spiral

causes a descending trust spiral

↓ ↓ Openness and knowledge sharing

Secrecy retains ignorance and causes

enhances learning and right decisions

mistaken decisions and/or indecision

↓ ↓ Successes enhance trust, learning,

Misunderstood failures further mistakes,

problem-solving and openness

distrust, secrecy and more failures

↓ ↓


Effective functioning encourages

Conservatism spares some mistakes but

innovations and more successes

causes brain-drain, foolishness, mistakes,

and furthers learning and successes and

failures, furthering detached ignorance

↓ ↓High-trust culture; performance and

Low-moral means defend job and help

innovation achieve promotion

seeking careerist promotion

The choice of involvement/detachment and compatible,

behaviors impact the trust level but so do contexts, histories

and other actors (Bachman, 2010; Wright and Ehnert, 2010).

High-trust, innovation-prone cultures called ‘organic’ by Burns

and Stalker (1961; e.g., Dore, 1973; Heskett, 2011; Ouchi,

1981) were common in early-day kibbutzim (pl. of kibbutz;

Shapira, 2001, 2008; Spiro, 1983) but often disappeared with

growth, success and oligarchization as in other large veteran

communes, co-operatives and socialist parties (Brumann, 2000;

Kressel, 1974; Michels, 1959[1915]; Shapira, 2008; Stryjan,


1989). However, even kibbutz members who managed kibbutzim

trustfully and collaboratively when they advanced to manage

IKCs (inter-kibbutz cooperatives) faced autocratic and

oligarchic practices (Shapira, 1987, 1995a, 2008) that

conformed to Israeli socialist organization practices (e.g.,

Shapira, 1993), which encouraged low-moral careerism. Worse

still, their ignorance of local knowledge encouraged low-moral

concealment/camouflaging of ignorance by detachment and/or

coercive involvement (e.g., Mehri, 2005; Shapira, 2013). These

sociological and cultural explanations of careerism may spare

the need for psychological explanations (e.g., Chiaburu et al.,

2012; Diefenbach, 2013) while they raise major questions:

1. Was careerism prevalent in the studied IKCs and if so how

can it be explained?

2. How did IKCs function despite the negative impact of

prevalent ignorant careerists?

3. What can be learned from this case for the study of

careerism?

4. What are the practical implications of these findings?

Anthropologists’ Achilles Heel Concerning Executives


and Its Overcoming

The above cited ethnographies and autobiographies indicate the

potential of anthropology to untangle and explain careerism by

thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973), but anthropologists’ prime

method is participant observation, as the sages of old said:

‘Don’t judge others until you have stood in their shoes’.

Barnard (1938, p. viii) echoed this requirement:

…social scientists …just reached the edge of organization as I experienced

it, and retreated. Rarely did they seem …to sense the processes of

coordination and decision that underlie a large part, at least, of the

phenomenon they described.

An anthropologist studying managerial careerism faces an

impassable barrier: s/he is unable to become an executive in

order to be a genuine participant observer and heed the sages

of old advice. Participation as a line employee conveys little

about executives’ deliberations and cannot ‘sense the[ir]

processes of coordination and decision’ as they experience

them. For instance, the three-year ethnography by engineer

Mehri (2005) exposed careerism but only of his direct bosses,

not among executives. An anthropologist also needs managerial

education (Yanow, 2004) and relevant experience (Klein, 1998;


Townley, 2002) in order to acquire interactional expertise

(Collins and Evans, 2007) and to be an insider-outsider

involved with executives (Gioia et al., 2010) and discern who

lacks pertinent expertise or its partiality (Flyvbjerg, 2001,

pp. 10-16) which is concealed. S/he requires a sufficiently

lengthy period to expose dark secrets and untangle the truth

behind executives’ positive image projections (Dalton, 1959;

Hase et al., 2006; Jackall, 1988; Maccoby, 1976), as well as

full trust, openness and genuine rapport that a provisional

employee, the anthropologist’s usual status, can hardly expect

of executives.

I overcame this barrier in a unique way which I call semi-

native anthropology: a native anthropologist studies her/his

own society, while I as a kibbutz member studied executives and

managers of cotton gin plants and their parent IKCs owned by 40

kibbutzim and managed by their members called pe’ilim (activists;

singular: pa’il). All pe’ilim commenced their managerial careers at

kibbutzim which were large communes, each with hundreds of

members and tens of managers and administrators. Similar to the

managers studied I too had considerable managerial experience

and a management education acquired at the Ruppin College, and


I knew some of them personally prior to my fieldwork. I also

knew their institutional context, the kibbutz system that

socialized them (e.g., Fondas and Wiersema, 1997). Other

anthropologists lacked prior acquaintance, essential managerial

experience and managerial education (Yanow, 2004) and often

were unfamiliar with the institutional contexts that socialized

executives (e.g., Alvesson and Kärreman, 2013). These

advantages enabled me to approach pe’ilim as their peer and to

turn interviews into discussions of common managerial problems.

I gained openness and genuine rapport from almost all of them,

accessing any document I wished to read. I frequently visited

the IKC and the focal plant throughout five years during which

I held both many casual talks and lengthy open interviews of up

to an hour and a half with 188 people (interviews recorded in

writing), both current and former pe’ilim and hired employees.

These enabled thick descriptions of pe’ilim practices, their

contexts and histories, judging them as if I stood in their

place, while I also performed even more extensive fieldwork

later on in their contexts, both other IKCs and kibbutzim

(Details see: Shapira, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2013).


The Cotton Gin Plant and Its Contexts, the IKC and the

Kibbutz Field

The focal cotton gin plant was part of Merkaz Regional

Enterprises IKC (a pseudonym, as are all names hereafter) owned

by 40 kibbutzim with some 10,000 inhabitants and handling much

of their agricultural input and output in six plants with some

$US 350 million sales (e.g., Niv and Bar-On, 1992). It was

administered by some 200 pe’ilim and operated by some 650 hired

employees. Kibbutzim received uniform salaries for pe’ilim’s work,

and the formal term of office of pe’ilim was five years, in accord

with the supposedly egalitarian rotatzia (rotation) norm at

kibbutzim. Rotatzia stipulated fixed office tenures of a few

years, 2-3 years in kibbutz management and 5 years at Merkaz,

but it was violated by many powerful senior pe’ilim who enjoyed

prestige and privileges and retained jobs for decades, becoming

oligarchic conservative rulers similar to prime leaders who

headed main kibbutz federations for half a century (Beilin,

1984; Near, 1997; Ron, 1978; Shapira, 1995a, 2005; Shure,

2001).

I commenced my research by interviewing the Merkaz CEO and 23


executives who portrayed themselves as servants of the

kibbutzim and defenders of their interests, repeating their

mantra: ‘the Regional Enterprises are the extended hand of the

kibbutzim’. As a kibbutz member with managerial background I

soon disproved this image by finding that executives were

mostly oblivious to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness,

primarily sought growth and technological virtuosity,

indicating power, prestige, privileges and tenure-seeking,

rather than how to best serve the owner-kibbutzim (e.g.,

Galbraith, 1971; Shapira, 1987, 2008).

Then I focused on the cotton gin plant, intermittently

observed it for five years, interviewed 164 current and past

managers and employees, extensively read its documents, learned

its problems and solutions from industry experts, made

participant observations as a seasonal shift-worker for 3.5

months, toured four other similar gin plants, and interviewed

63 of their present and past pe’ilim (Shapira, 1987, 1995a,

1995b). Subsequently, I studied plants’ context, the kibbutz

field, by ethnographic-historical studies of other IKCs, as

well as four kibbutzim, and used four other kibbutz

ethnographies to comprehend pe’ilim so that I could judge them as


if I stood in their shoes, using a social field perspective

(Bourdieu, 1990; Lewin, 1951) combined with a historical view

(Wallrstein, 2004) and analysis of institutions that impacted

managerial career choices and practices (Shapira, 2001, 2008,

2012; Whitley, 2007, Ch. 6).

In 1985, on the eve of the terminal crisis of the kibbutz

system, its field in the terms of Lewin (1951) and Bourdieu

(1977) consisted of 269 kibbutzim with 129,000 inhabitants and

250-300 IKCs with 15-18,000 hired employees and 4,000-4,500

managers and administrator pe’ilim (Niv and Bar-On, 1992; numbers

are inexact due to intentional lack of research. see: Shapira,

2001, 2005, 2008). Prime leaders who founded the two largest

kibbutz federations in 1927 with some 80% of kibbutzim entered

dysfunction phases (Hambrick and Fukutomi, 1991) in the early

1940s but retained supremacy up to the 1970s by centralizing

control, castrating democracy and Machiavellian reverence of

Stalinism that legitimized these measures, their indefinite

rule and censorship of publications (Beilin, 1984; Porat, 2000;

Shapira, 2008). Each federation had hundreds of pe’ilim, including

8-10 Knesset (parliament) members (of a total of 120) and two-

three cabinet ministers (of a total of 15-18), as well as other


senior offices in which pe’ilim overruled rotatzia and held onto

their power indefinitely (Shapira, 2001, 2005; Shure, 2001).

Their amenities were modest to accord egalitarianism but they

enjoyed ample power and social, economic and symbolic capitals

(Bourdieu, 1977), as well as privileges by which they

suppressed critics and innovators who often left, much like in

other large veteran cooperatives and communes (Brumann, 2000;

Russell, 1995; Stryjan, 1989). Kibbutz canonic research ignored

this oligarchy (Shapira, 2005, 2012), while most IKC CEOs

heeded it and kept their jobs for decades. The CEOs of the

three largest IKCs, with their 3500, 1700, and 1400 employees

remained in power for 33, 28, and 38 years, respectively; even

the relatively egalitarian Merkaz CEOs continued 8-10 years

versus the 2-3 years of local kibbutz managers (Shapira, 2008).

IKC CEOs ignored prime leaders’ preaching of democracy and

egalitarianism which they themselves violated, while kibbutzim

as IKC owners rarely demanded CEOs replacement when they

entered dysfunction phase (Hambrick and Fukutomi, 1991). Senior

pe’ilim who, were IKC executives dominated their relevant

kibbutzim informally due to their powers and advantages; they

mostly chose rotational kibbutz managers according to personal


loyalties and when jobs ended after 2-3 years only loyalists

were promoted to IKC offices (Shapira, 2001, 2008). These

kibbutz managers were mostly weak novices who represented

kibbutzim on IKC Boards of Directors, and due to both weakness

and efforts to prove loyalty to pe’ilim in order to further

managerial careers they rarely defended the interests of the

kibbutzim (Shapira, 1987, 2008; and below). Moav, the veteran

ex-gin plant manager (aged 75 when interviewed), who was a pa’il

in various IKCs for some 45 years, openly scorned this futile

democracy:

It really mattered very little whether these representatives came and

drank some cups of tea or not.

Kibbutz leaders and their co-opted scientific coalition of

functionalist researchers (e.g., Collins, 1975, Ch. 9)

collaboratively concealed this reality to defend and enhance

the prestige, power and privileges of both parties (Shapira,

2008, 2012). This collaboration enhanced the oligarchization of

the kibbutz field, preventing public critique of old guard

dysfunction until it vanished in the 1970s. This guard promoted

loyalist careerist pe’ilim while pruning talented critical

thinkers and innovators who often left (Beilin, 1984). Worse


still, conformist loyalists who lacked critical thinking

succeeded the old guard and due to this lack they continued its

policies but performed them even worse (Shapira, 1995a, 2008;

e.g., Hirschman, 1970).

Kibbutz Field Oligarchization, IKC Failures and No

Control by Owner Kibbutzim

Moav was such a loyalist and a pa’il on the second and third

rungs of the six-seven hierarchic ranks of IKCs (Shapira,

2005). At the top were heads of the three major kibbutz

federations, beneath them were cabinet ministers, Knesset

(parliament) members and major CEOs such as the CEO of the

national water corporation, the General Secretary of the

Histadrut General Labor Union with some three million members,

the above mentioned CEOs of largest IKCs and others (Beilin,

1984; Izhar, 2005; Near, 1997; Shapira, 2005). In the 1960s,

kibbutzim reached the peak of their political success; they

held 22% of all Knesset seats and 33% of cabinet ministers,

although constituting only 3.5% of the Israeli population.

As outsiders coming from kibbutzim to manage IKCs, pe’ilim

suffered large gaps in essential local knowledge (e.g., Bower,


2007; Fine, 2012) and often lacked pertinent expertises for

jobs including referred expertise, that is, expertise in other

domains that helps learning and functioning (Collins and Evans,

2007; Collins and Sanders, 2007). The most common practice they

used to defend authority and jobs and advance their careers was

detachment from locals who might have exposed their ignorance

and lack of pertinent expertise (e.g., Blau, 1955) as shown by

Edgerton’s (1967) findings among mentally retarded youth: when

outside their shelter they kept their image of competence by

avoiding others who might have exposed their incompetence.

Short terms due to rotatzia norm also discouraged pe’ilim from

learning local problems, knowledge that would be unusable in

subsequent managerial jobs elsewhere in the kibbutz field

(Shapira, 1995a). ‘Star’ pe’ilim advanced rapidly by alternating

IKC jobs (e.g., Shure, 2001; Tzimchi, 1999), thus pe’ilim often

grasped mid-level jobs as mere stepping stones to the top,

avoiding vulnerable, ignorance-exposing involvement required to

gain locals’ trust and to learn and solve problems effectively

(e.g., Guest, 1962; Mayer et al., 1995; Pirson and Malhotra,

2011; Shapira, 1995b, 2013; Zand, 1972). Rather, pe’ilim mostly

defended their jobs and advanced their careers by ignorance-


concealing detachment as did some of Blau’s (1955) senior

officers, or by seductive-coercive control (Gouldner, 1954)

plus loyalty to patrons and cliques that helped

conceal/camouflage/scapegoat ignorance-driven mistakes,

failures and wrongs (e.g., Dalton, 1959; Gittell, 2000; Hughes,

1958; Mehri, 2005).

Touring Merkaz plants untangled clear signs of self-serving a

careerist power elite contrary to pe’ilim’s altruist assertions.

For example, as against pe’ilim’s brand new company, cars fork-

lifts were cheap old sluggish models that frequently breakdown.

Another contrast: most plants were enlarged recently far beyond

kibbutz agricultural requirements while exhibiting

technological virtuosity, signaling the accumulation of power

and intangible capitals by the managerial elite interested in

prestige, status, privileges and prolonged tenures (Galbraith,

1971). Likewise lavish amenities: air-conditioned offices and

company cars which were rare in kibbutzim at the time, and

privileges such as ‘learning trips’ abroad which were

undeclared bonuses as their routes often violated declared

aims. Kibbutzim had abstemious egalitarian cultures, while

pe’ilim’s standard of living especially that of senior ones, was


well beyond kibbutzim standard, reflected for instance in much

interest in their company car models: When I came to the CEO’s

office at the time set for an interview, I had to wait some

twenty minutes until he and his deputy concluded a long and

quite heated debate about the experience of driving the

deputy’s new model car.

Pe’ilim’s little interest in plants’ effectiveness was

demonstrated by the inefficiency of the Merkaz fodder mix

plant: before adding the new highly computerized second mill in

1976 the annual mix production per employee was 1291 tons,

while subsequently instead of the promised enhanced

productivity it fell to 1123 tons. This mill’s construction was

a mega-projects-type OPM waste by excessively ambitious

executives (Flyvbjerg et al., 2003): Its planned cost was US$8

million, while the actual cost was US$20 million (fixed prices)

with same production capacity. Executives bent the numbers to

legitimize building the largest mill in the country for which

the Swiss producer developed its largest presses by special

order, and these suffered novelty troubles for years. To cut a

long story short, soon after construction began it became known

that the true cost would be 250% higher than planned, while


fodder mix consumption projections showed that only half the

planned capacity would be required in the next decade. However,

pe’ilim stubbornly objected to any feasible reduction of the

scale of the project as demanded by Board members representing

kibbutzim. In addition to damaging managers’ prestige and

denying them the prestige of having the largest mill, such a

reduction at such an advanced stage was a very complex problem

requiring much expertise which executives mostly lacked as

detached outsiders. They objected and won over weak younger

kibbutz representatives whose future careers were dependent inter

alia on powerful Merkaz CEO and executives who backed plant

managers. Thus kibbutzim paid higher fodder mix prices for

almost a decade due to extra costs of both the project and of

inefficiency.

Quite similar excesses were also found in other Merkaz

plants, suggesting self-aggrandizing low-moral executives

(Shapira, 1987). When combined with outsider managers’

ignorance they caused fiascos: Gin plant manager Yuval decided

to replace the electricity system at the cost of some

US$300,000 with an imported system presented by the importer

and a colluding engineer that planned the replacement as state-


of-the-art. Soon after starting operations it failed and was

replaced, doubling the cost. The former plant’s chief,

electrician who had left due to his objections to this system,

becoming a successful electricity installer contractor,

testified that he had warned Yuval that it was presented as

novel because there were no such systems in Israel since they

had already tried, failed and were replaced. But Yuval was

ignorant of industrial electricity and concealed his ignorance

by refraining from checking out the assertion of the

credential-lacking electrician with experts.

I asked Moav, Yuval’s predecessor, whether kibbutzim as

owners could prevent such a fiasco, as well as similar others

that I have witnessed, and he answered:

The IKC is structured such that everything is controlled from the top, its

management decides everything. All the general assemblies of kibbutz

representatives have become useless, kibbutzim show no interest in Merkaz

problems... when establishing an apparatus it then runs itself, deciding

patterns, deciding actions...

However, the IKC did not really ‘runs itself’; executives ran

it without giving owner kibbutzim any real say in its

management (Shapira, 1987), similar to the autocratic old guard


leaders and other veteran oligarchic IKC heads (Shapira, 2001,

2008). Merkaz executives followed their predecessors, while

kibbutz representatives reacted to the mock democracy by

avoidance: less than half of them participated in annual

assemblies,1 many participants said they would not come next

year as it was a waste of time, and pe’ilim passed every motion

they wished. This was also true of the absence of many kibbutz

representatives from the gin plant Board sessions, which

transformed the minority of pe’ilim into a majority among

participants and controllers of decisions. Merkaz owner

kibbutzim also failed to control pe’ilim because:

1) The prestige and power accruing to pe’ilim by plants’ scale

and technological virtuosity (Galbraith, 1971), while

plants’ mediocre functioning gave pe’ilim external

legitimization (Drory and Honig, 2013).

2) Mostly Merkaz executives dominated their home kibbutzim

due to their jobs’ advantages and mostly nominated their

loyalists to manage them (Shapira, 2008, Ch. 6), hence,

these loyalists rarely if ever dared object to pe’ilim.1 Besides the Merkaz general assembly there were assemblies for each plant

in which participation was limited to those kibbutzim that used its

services.


Now I will use the case of the Merkaz cotton gin plant to

explain plants’ functioning while managed mostly by ignorant

careerist outsiders.

The Ignorant Detached/Coercively Involved Careerist

Gin Plant Managers

A mute fool is reputed to be wise (Jewish saying).

During five years of study Merkaz’s high capacity automatic gin

plant was gradually enlarged up to a processing capacity of 700

tons of raw cotton daily in the high season, mid-September to

early January. It had 27 permanent employees, 12 pe’ilim and 15

hired employees, to which were added over 70 seasonal workers.

The 164 interviews and other ample data collected on the

plant’s nineteen years history and its three managers suggest

that two were detached careerists and one was a seductive-

coercive careerist (Gouldner, 1954). All three preferred their

own interests over common ones whenever the two clashed and did

not risk authority by vulnerable involvement such as asking

questions in ginning expert deliberations in order to learn the

plant’s major problems. None of them was fully trusted by most

employees, who rightfully felt that they were careerists


oblivious of learning and caring of their work problems and

hardships, unlike a few involved mid-level pe’ilim whose

committed efforts facilitated the plant’s functioning and the

job survival of their ignorant bosses (Shapira, 2013).

Similar careerists were found seven of the eight managers of

four other gin plants studied by plant visits and interviews of

them and of 55 of plants’ present and past pe’ilim; only one gin

plant manager, Arye, was vulnerably involved like Guest’s

(1962) outsider and the mid-level managers depicted below,

engendered virtuous trust and learning cycles, and his plant

excelled nationally for a decade until succession. His

uniqueness is explained by a habitus of vulnerable involvement

created at his kibbutz as field crops branch manager, and by

having referred expertise (Collins and Sanders, 2007) as a

practical engineer which none of the other gin plant managers

had. Arye was a servant transformational leader (Barbuto, 1997;

Graham, 1991), a socialized leader versus ten personalized

others (e.g., Poulin et al., 2007) who were ignorant

careerists, eight of them defended authority by detachment,

like Edgerton’s (1967) retarded teenagers, and two, Yuval and

another plant manager, used seduction-coercion. In Israel such


outsiders were called ‘parachuted’ managers as they took

control like alien paratroopers, e.g., an ex-senior army

commander who is ‘parachuted’ to head a big firm or city.

‘Parachuting’ encourages careerism primarily because of the

large gap of local knowledge (Bower, 2007; Fine, 2012) that

discourages a ‘parachutist’ from vulnerable involvement that

exposes this gap and ruins authority that may not be regained

if one’s learning and functioning fails because the gap is too

large (see Avi’s case below). A ‘parachutist’

detachment/coercive involvement, engenders a distrust and

ignorance cycle that encourages use of low-moral means to

survive in the job. Within kibbutzim some managers advanced by

performance while others advanced under the auspices of patrons

(Shapira, 2008), while almost all promotions to IKCs on which I

have information, except that of Arye, were due to patronage or

other low-moral means; Arye was nominated because his cotton

branch excelled. Ties with promoting CEOs explained Merkaz

cases: Moav was a relative of his CEO while both Yuval and the

third manager Shavit were members of the same kibbutzim as

their respective CEOs. Moreover, in previous managerial jobs

Moav and Shavit were loyalists of their respective CEOs (e.g.,


Dalton, 1959; Hirschman, 1970; Kanter, 1977).

Such ‘parachutists’ are inclined to self-serving careerism,

expecting further promotion by auspices rather than by

performance. Quite symbolic of careerism was plant managers’

well-cared-for, nice, clean, air-conditioned second floor of

the office building, compared to the relative neglect and

squalor of the first floor that housed the offices of non-

careerist pe’ilim, situated by the non-air-conditioned dining

room serving the shift workers and seasonal workers, as well as

their dirty showers and toilets (permanent staff working the

day shift dined at the industrial park’s nice spacious air-

conditioned dining hall). All six pe’ilim on the second floor

wore clean nice clothes, while the first floor’s two involved

pe’ilim, technical manager Thomas and deputy manager Danton wore

dirty clothes. Thomas shared his office with the clean-clothes

detached careerist Avi, also called ‘technical manager’ though

only assisting Thomas; this fiction served bosses’ power (see

below). Two other dirty-clothes involved pe’ilim managed the

garage and the electric workshop where their dirty offices were

located.

The four involved pe’ilim coped with the plant’s uncertainty


domains (Crozier, 1964): operation, maintenance, cotton supply,

product transportation and specialized manpower supply

(Shapira, 2013). Both Moav and Shavit were detached and

ignorant of these domains, and involved only in what they had

done in earlier jobs: bookkeeping, economic analyses, finances,

outside relations and sessions of the management and Board,

safer functions as many of their aspects were cared for by

other IKCs. I witnessed Yuval’s coercive control and Shavit’s

detachment (below) while tens of interviewees testified to

Moav’s similarity to Shavit. One of Moav’s two involved

knowledgeable deputies portrayed his detachment in the plant

Board’s decision-making:

…they [representatives of kibbutzim] did not understand much about

most subjects on the agenda, and Moav and a manager of another plant

who represented the IKC on the plant’s Board were quite similar. The

only two who really knew what was going on in the plant and coped

with almost all major problems, thus also shaping most decisions,

were myself and Moav’s other deputy (e.g., Fine, 2012)

Management sessions were quite similar, according to the

minutes: Moav rarely spoke, except when finances were discussed

in an attempt to save on expenses. However, he was lavish with


his own amenities: one of the first air-conditioned offices in

the park, a nice small company car but better than other cars,

and more. Shavit behaved similarly; in his rare visits to the

shop-floor he reacted only to pe’ilim, asking only trivial

questions such as how many bales were produced last night or

the cotton of which kibbutz was being processed; he never

consulted foremen and expert employees about major problems,

decisions, or changes.

Shavit survived in the job for five years, four of them

because of plant well-functioning, until Thomas left: technical

manager Thomas used the leeway created by Shavit’s detachment

for servant transformational highly trusted leadership of a few

involved pe’ilim and expert hired employees. Together they

learned and solved problems in communities of practitioners

(Orr, 1996) and created an ‘us’ feeling (Haslam et al., 2011)

through virtuous trustful learning. This happened both on the

shop floor while coping with failed/broken machines and on the

benches in the shade in front of the offices where mostly

deputy manager Danton and less frequently Thomas congregated

with hired workers, operators, mechanics and foremen. Without

prior knowledge, it was impossible to discern managers from


foremen and workers; only towards the end of a discussion one

could have seen that Danton or Thomas concluded what had to be

done and all departed to do it. Most prior discourse was

egalitarian and included an occasional dirty joke by a worker

that sometimes pinned down a manager or foreman. Less

frequently, the other involved pe’ilim, the electrician, and the

garage manager would drop by, while neither Shavit nor Avi

participated in these informal problem-solving meetings.

Non-Careerist Pe’ilim Achieved Plant’s Functioning which

Enhanced Careerism

Thomas, with the three involved pe’ilim and hired expert

employees, successfully converted the low-trust shop-floor

culture that he had found when coming to the plant, shortly

before my observations, into a local high-trust, knowledge-

sharing and learning culture. This change was executed despite

of Yuval and then Shavit and other pe’ilim conforming to Merkaz’s

low-trust practices (e.g., Parker, 2000, Ch. 6). As noted,

Thomas chose vulnerable involvement in accord with kibbutz

garage twenty years habitus, first as a mechanic from the age

of 14, working after school hours, and then as manager. As


technical manager he continued the habitus of egalitarian

camaraderie and remained a trusting servant leader involved in

every recalcitrant problem, committed to professional

excellence and cooperatively innovative (Cunha, 2002; Gobillot,

2007; Semler, 1993; Shapira, 2008, pp. 106-9, 224-5). He was

not concerned that ignorance exposure would impair his personal

authority as he would soon learn, solve problems and gain

authority, which indeed occurred (Gabarro, 1987; Watkins, 2003;

Zand, 1972). His behavior contrasted with that of Yuval and Avi

and raised eyebrows, but soon employees came to trust him,

conveyed knowledge and he in turn trusted them and delegated

authority, creating an ascending trust and learning cycle.

Becoming a trusted member in an egalitarian community of

ginning practitioners, status differences no longer blocked the

flow of ideas and information (Simon, 1957, p. 230), furthering

learning and successful innovative problem-solving, especially

after Shavit (aged 30) and his deputy Danton (32) took charge.

Danton was Thomas’ key supporter in conflicts with ignorant

Shavit; until the two parted in Thomas’ last year (below) they

regarded Shavit much as Moav’s two knowledgeable involved

deputies had regarded Moav a decade earlier, as an alien


ignorant authority to be manipulated to minimize damage to the

plant’s functioning. Danton was an ex-cotton branch manager

with a Thomas-like habitus. While the clothes worn by Thomas,

the garage manager, and the electrician were dirty, as they

handled dirty machines, Danton could have remained quite clean

if just managing his jurisdiction, the plant’s yard operations,

transportation and provisional manpower supply, by directing

the drivers of lorries, vans, tractors and forklifts, but his

experience in operating and problem-solving of such machines

and egalitarian management habitus encouraged him to solve

problems, including mechanical faults, replacing a tractor

driver for lunch, etc., hence, he was also dirty and highly

trusted as reflected in the informal meetings on the benches in

front of the offices. Danton supported Thomas’ efforts to solve

the problems left by Avi’s failures (below) and other problems;

his cooperation with Thomas and the two other involved pe’ilim

instilled a local high-trust culture that enhanced performance.

High-trust culture was engendered by another practice as

well: accessibility of the four to employee communications

(Thomas et al., 2009). They were mostly outside their offices

and when in office doors were mostly open, hence, easy to reach


informally to receive and supply information, listen to

complaints, unsolved work problems and suggestions, unlike the

other pe’ilim who were quite inaccessible except for intrusions

into their clean offices on the second floor, clearly

differentiated from the dirtier first floor of Thomas and

Danton’s offices and the non-air-conditioned dirty shift worker

facilities. However, Avi’s adjacent office was rarely accessed

even after replacing Thomas as he was detached and distrusted

ignorant (below).

Outside the building stood pe’ilim’s company cars which also

signaled differences (hired employees received no such cars; a

few had old cars): Shavit’s, Avi’s and administrators’ cars

were clean brand new models, versus the lesser and not so clean

cars of the involved pe’ilim (only Danton got a new car after two

years). Particularly dirty and old was Thomas’s station-wagon

which he refused to replace with a new but smaller car,

explaining that it enabled fast transporting of a burned heavy

electric motor to a repair shop, shortening production time

loss. Detached pe’ilim also differed from involved ones by more

abstentions, often traveling officially for business purposes

found upon close scrutiny to involve private ends such as


seeking a job. The four involved ones had no time for these as

they were busy with effective job functioning, hoping successes

would enable tenure beyond the formal short rotatzia term.

There were additional high-trust practices that cannot be

detailed due to a lack of space (see: Shapira, 1995a, 1995b,

2013). The general picture, however, is clear: The four pe’ilim

continued high-trust practices of kibbutz work units at the

plant, ignoring the conformity of most pe’ilim to Merkaz low-

trust practices. Their openness to frequent, authentic and

credible communication with hired employees enhanced trust and

cooperative involvement (Barbuto, 1997; DeTienne et al., 2004;

Thomas et al., 2009), opened channels to the latter,

contributing to management and leadership, which helped Thomas’

exceptional success.

The plant’s performance during Thomas’ era gained Shavit

external legitimization (Drory and Honig, 2013). Then Thomas

left, Avi replaced him, failed miserably before my eyes and a

year later he and Shavit were replaced by new ignorant pe’ilim.

The veteran stores manager pa’il (16 years tenure) detested this

rotational management by incompetents and nostalgically

portrayed above cited Moav’s deputy thus:


He modeled committed leadership so convincingly that you could not but

followed him.

This was said in Yuval’s last season when witnessing his

coerciveness: Mostly distanced from employees, he sometimes

interfered autocratically in deliberations, only minimally

listened to experts and made amateurish and foolish decisions

that caused animosity, distrust and secrecy, as with the

electricity system replacement. He roamed around seeking

information like Gouldner’s (1954) outsider, but as he was

distrusted employees never truly taught him. His ignorance was

exposed, for instance, when he drove a forklift over a frail

pit cup which broke, and he and the machine fell into the pit.

Secrecy and ignorance similarly failed him in staff nominations

which were also aimed at power gains to assure his control.

Nomination and Bogus Retention of a Mid-Manager by

Careerist Bosses

Practical engineer Avi was recruited by Yuval and his deputy

(aged 30 and 32, respectively) three years before the

observations to replace the veteran hired technical manager.

This aim was kept secret to prevent resistance (e.g., Hase et


al., 2006), since the heir apparent was an experienced talented

hired certified practical engineer who served as the unofficial

deputy technical manager. All informants denied Yuval’s alleged

explanation for not promoting him. The real reason was his

power: He was ten years older than Yuval and was a very

proficient ginner and very popular among the hired staff, and

hence was chosen shop steward. The young greenhorn bosses

worried that he would be uncontrollable if promoted to

technical manager, preferring a young pa’il like themselves (e.g.,

Kanter, 1977, Ch. 6). But Avi’s mechanical expertise was only

theoretical; before coming to the plant he had managed the

locksmith shop at his kibbutz with two assistants, never

handling mechanical problems. Besides he had no ties with

trusted experts to teach him ginning, no sign of whether he

could gain their trust and how to do this and learn. Both the

veteran technical manager and his informal deputy soon

suspected that Avi would become the technical manager and

taught him only the minimum, enhancing Avi’s doubts about his

learning prospects that kept him detached.

After a year and a half as a deputy who had supposedly

learned, ginning Avi replaced the technical manager. Detached


Avi was largely ignorant but his bosses missed this as they

were ignorant of their own ignorance (Kruger and Dunning,

1999). Avi failed miserably at his job and soon Yuval’s deputy

called his kibbutz garage manager, Thomas (35), also a

certified practical engineer, to the rescue. The deputy

explained the decision thus:

Avi is not the right stuff that we [Yuval and I] have sought; he is not

that [a truly technical manager]. Thomas has learned the problems much

quicker and although he has only been on the job for four months, he has

proved to be the right stuff.

Melkman, a veteran expert in gears and speed reducers,

described Avi’s ignorance:

Avi is a good guy but from the point of view of professional know-how he’s

weak and has no real know-how. You can feel he never really worked with

such machines. A good professional knows how to react [to questions] but

not so Avi. He’s not the right man… If you have a problem and take it to

him and he never has a real solution for it, he is as much in trouble as

you are, what’s the point asking him?

Quite similar were others’ testimonies (Shapira, 1995b). As

depicted, vulnerably involved Thomas became a trusted leader by

proving his technical ability and commitment to tasks (Pirson


and Malhotra, 2011), acquiring proficiency by experiential

learning (Klein, 1998; Orlikowski, 2004), and became a trusted

member of the ginning practitioners’ community (e.g., Fine,

2012; Orr, 1996).

However, Avi was not fired: Thomas was formally installed as

a second technical manager, on the grounds of an anticipated

plant expansion in the booming cotton industry; in reality, Avi

became an administrative aide to Thomas and liaison/boundary

spanner of technical supplies (Vashist et al., 2011). He

retained management membership and symbols such as his company

car as he served his bosses’ power: His total dependency on

them assured his loyalty and enabled them to tame Thomas whose

successes enhanced his prestige and power (Klein, 1998) by the

old strategy of divide et impera. Importing and promoting Avi who

had credentials but no pertinent expertise while a much better

candidate was an expert insider, and later retaining his status

despite miserable failure and de-facto replacement, were

clearly low-moral careerist actions aimed at enhancing power,

and Shavit retained Avi for the same reason.

Thomas’ Success, Exit and Return of Careerists’ Low-


Trust Culture

Thomas gained power by servant transformational leadership

hampered little by careerist Avi. There is no room here to

depict all of Thomas’s successes which made him a well-known

expert among Israel’s cotton gin plants and then abroad, as

efficiency and effectiveness soared. Shavit did not interfere

since the plant’s functioning seemed to prove his capability,

but it frightened him: Successful Thomas dominated technical,

operational and investment decisions at the expense of Shavit’s

power. When Thomas proposed developing and building an original

automatic cotton-feeder at one third of US firms’ prices,

$US80,000 instead of $US250,000, Shavit felt that it was too

good to be true and used red tape to tame Thomas and Danton,

who supported the innovation. To cut a long story short, three

years’ struggle of the two against Shavit and his patron Merkaz

CEO concluded with success, the machine was built, but Thomas

did not inaugurate it. He resigned after the machine was

successfully tested, tired of the conflicts with Shavit. At the

festive inauguration, careerist Shavit proudly stood at the

control bench as if he had invented the machine, while Thomas’

name was not even mentioned in a low-moral Machiavellian


appropriation of his exceptional contribution by its opponent.

Another reason for leaving was another major conflict with

Shavit in which Danton opposed Thomas about which type of

cotton cleaning machines to add. Thomas’ view defeated Shavit’s

and Danton’s on the Board but this inflamed Danton:

A plant cannot run well if time and again we surrender to the whims of one

person, even if he is the best expert.

Without Danton’s support Thomas saw no prospects for further

successes and innovation hence he left. Thomas seemed

capricious to Danton, but my expert sources supported Thomas

effort to reach an optimal solution; as a manager Danton was

supposed to know ginning but he did not, rather he settled for

knowing his area of jurisdiction.

Shavit nominated Avi to succeed Thomas, since in his

ignorance he missed Avi’s (Kruger and Dunning, 1999), who

despite five years of being called technical manager remained

an incompetent ‘half-baked manager’ (Dore, 1973, p. 59). Avi

soon failed again by ignorance concealing detachment (Shapira,

1995b, 2013) and ruined the high-trust culture, since he

instilled suspicions, distrust, secrecy and detesting by

employees; he did not know for sure what was going on and made


awful mistakes. Danton was trusted more but employees despised

his support for Shavit’s efforts to keep failing Avi, whose

mistaken decisions caused them and me many extra hardships: Avi

failed to solve a major problem involving the repeated clogging

of a new cleaning machine he himself had chosen, causing a loss

of 20% of ginning capacity throughout most of the season and

losses amounting to some US$150-200,000. The losses ousted

Shavit and Avi only a year later, enabling both them and the

Merkaz CEO to keep face and him to remain in his job. Without

the stigma of failed managers they both advanced their

managerial careers elsewhere, proving the success of their

careerist strategy.

Summary and Discussion

The monopolization of IKC managerial jobs by kibbutzim,

formally aimed at ensuring their interests, engendered the rule

of outsider careerist executives who forsook these interests

when these collided with their own. As cited, outsider

executives and ‘star’ CEOs are common, inter alia because for half

a century numerous succession studies failed to conclude

whether insiders or outsiders are preferable (Karaevli, 2007).


However, others found the superiority of insiders (Bower, 2007;

Collins, 2001; Heskett, 2011; Santora, 2004; Shapira, 1987,

2008) as well as outsiders’ failures (Groysberg et al., 2006;

Groysberg et al., 2008; Johnson, 2008; Khurana, 2002; Tichy and

Bennis, 2007). My findings support, them explaining outsider

executives’ negative, records by careerism barring learning of

essential local knowledge and preventing trustworthy authority

that a newcomer tries achieving (Gabbaro, 1987; Watkins, 2003).

Lack of such authority hardly bothered Merkaz ‘parachuted’

careerist CEOs; they were detached from plants’ problems and

were empowered by importing loyalists or prospective ones to

manage plants and to man Merkaz’s Board of Directors, while

playing safe conservatism, as with Thomas’s three-year-delayed

invention; they rather enhanced prestige and power by

enlargements and technological virtuosity (Galbraith, 1971).

Versus a lone non-careerist gin plant manager, ten others

were careerists who used low-moral strategies and concealed

ignorance by detachment and/or seduction-coercion, causing

vicious distrust and ignorance cycles resulting in low-trust

cultures and failures. One vulnerably involved plant manager

and a few similar mid-levelers achieved plants’ functioning by


engendering virtuous trust and learning cycles that led to

high-trust local innovative-prone cultures contrary to IKCs’

low-trust ones. These behaviors were explained by egalitarian

and democratic habituses (e.g., Obembe, 2012) at kibbutz work

units, in which they advanced by proven performance that also

encouraged ignorance exposure by vulnerable involvement when

‘parachuted’ to manage unknown IKCs (Shapira, 1995b, 2013).

Careerist pe’ilim either had no such habituses and/or had no

enough pertinent knowledge which encouraged concealing

ignorance as a safer career alternative. Some authors assert

that character and talent are more important than skills and

knowledge when hiring staff (Collins, 2001, Ch. 3; Meyer, 2010,

p. 63), but skills and knowledge proved more important by

impacting the choice of trust-creating vulnerable involvement:

Shavit’s and Avi’s minimal pertinent knowledge and skills

encouraged detachment that failed them, while Thomas’s and

Danton’s pertinent knowledge encouraged learning by vulnerable

involvement and led to successes although the formers had more

managerial experience and education and were seemingly more

talented than the latter.

In addition, Thomas and Danton came from small kibbutz work


units in which informal democratic and egalitarian management

encouraged non-careerist advance by performance, while Shavit’s

and Avi’s habituses encouraged careerism as detailed elsewhere

(Shapira, 1987, 1995a). Ethnographies of kibbutzim found

contrary managerial habituses: the majority was ruled

informally by oligarchic careerist old guard pe’ilim, while the

minority was led by democratic and egalitarian non-careerists

(Shapira, 1990, 2001, 2005, 2008). Similarly, a few IKC non-

careerists shaped local high-trust cultures of their choice, as

Thomas answered when asked why he worked so hard and such long

hours:

I always prefer a bed in which I myself have laid out the linen.

The thick description which uses findings of many

ethnographies and histories (ibid, and Shapira, 1992, 1995b,

2011, 2013) clearly discerns the servant transformational

leadership of vulnerably involved non-careerists from the low-

moral detached/ coercively involved careerists. Non-careerists

expected their performances to free them from the Sodom Bed of

rotatzia, as for instance gin plant manager Arye continued his

successes for a decade as often happened inside kibbutzim and a

few IKCs. The thick description proved that rotatzia enhanced


oligarchic rule: it empowered IKC heads and their loyalists who

prevented their own rotatzia, while short terms weakened most

pe’ilim and kibbutz managers. This encouraged careerist servitude

loyalty to higher-ups even among effective non-careerist

managers: Their early rotatzia which deterred productive use of

acquired knowledge and power to succeed by further changes and

innovations encouraged them to seek IKC jobs in which they saw

veteran pe’ilim preventing their own rotatzia under the auspices of

higher-ups; hence many turned their efforts from performance to

finding patronage (Shapira, 2001, 2008).

Other descriptions of the kibbutz field context also helped

explain managers’ behaviors, for instance, they explained the

seemingly illogical logic (Bourdieu, 1990) of the detachment

choice: This choice prevented one from learning local know-how

and phronesis required for effective functioning, but was logical

considering that the kibbutz field was dominated by low-moral

conservative oligarchic leaders who shaped low-trust IKC

cultures in which docile loyalty to higher-ups and use of low-

moral means promoted careers more than job effectiveness

(Shapira, 2008; e.g., Luthans, 1988). Accordingly detached

ignorant low-moral CEOs survived in their jobs despite


failures: They enhanced power by importing loyalists to

managerial jobs; when importees followed their detachment and

failed, came to the rescue knowledgeable conscientious kibbutz

members and prevented total failures until their growing power

due to successes seemed to threaten bosses’ supremacy and they

were suppressed and left or were fired, as a seemingly rotatzia.

Then new loyalists were brought in and the cycle repeated

itself, the seesaw continued while retaining careerist CEOs.

Thick description that uses kibbutz field knowledge can

explain, for instance, the importance of Merkaz CEO’s decision

to delay for a year the firing of Shavit and Avi following the

US$150-200,000 fiasco. This enabled them to continue their

managerial careers elsewhere in the field, while owing him

reciprocation. This was beneficial for the CEO: he and Shavit

shared a kibbutz membership and he earned Shavit support in

kibbutz decisions. Another example: descriptions of the kibbutz

field’s thousands of pe’ilim jobs help explain Avi’s decisive

‘wait and see’ detachment which led to the vicious distrust and

ignorance cycle: While facing a lack of pertinent expertise for

the job he knew that many other IKC offices might have fitted

his skills; these possibilities enhanced his hesitation to


expose ignorance.

Conclusions and Further Research

The thick description is the hallmark of Geertz’s (1973)

interpretative anthropology. While Hambrick (2007) concluded

that high echelons theory studies ‘leave us at a loss as to the

real psychological and social processes that are driving

executive behavior’ (p. 335), the thick description of the

plant, the IKC and the kibbutz field, based on numerous

ethnographies in its two hemispheres plus historical analysis

and a longitudinal semi-native anthropological study by a

management educated and experienced ex-manager, clearly

interpreted IKC executives’ behaviors as careerist and

untangled the driving social processes. The context of an

oligarchic field dominated by conservative dysfunctioning

leaders and then by even worse successors encouraged careerism

of pe’ilim, while the context of egalitarian and democratic

kibbutz work units explained the few non-careerist mid-levelers

whose functioning prevented plants’ total failure. Oligarchic

leaders dominated through tenured loyal clients whose

advantages as pe’ilim enabled some of them to dominate their


kibbutzim while rotatzia weakened kibbutz chosen managers and made

their careers dependent on the formers’ patronage. This

careerism was inexplicable without thick description that

encompassed the context of the field in which loyalty to

higher-ups gained promotion rather than performance and

innovators and critical thinkers were allowed discretion until

they succeeded, were empowered and then suppressed. Moreover,

this description explained the powerlessness of representatives

of owner kibbutzim versus IKC executives and how careers of

ineffective careerist executives soared without owners’ control

of IKCs, surpassing those of effective managers, as in the

cited literature.

The thick description of both managerial processes and their

contexts explained the prevalence of pe’ilim careerism both

culturally and sociologically. Many careerist pe’ilim commenced

as non-careerists inside kibbutzim; personality changes could

not explain such an extensive metamorphosis, while the field’s

impact explained it: veteran oligarchic IKC heads inculcated

the practice of ‘parachuting’ ignorant outsiders and rotatzia,

creating a field that offered prospects of promotion by

patronage rather than by performance. Ineffective careerist


executives dominated IKCs while non-careerist mid-level

rescuers prevented total failures by instigating virtuous trust

and learning cycles, resulting in local high-trust innovative

cultures which existed within the contexts of contrasting low-

trust cultures (e.g., Parker, 2000). IKCs societal conformity

helped camouflage executives’ careerism, which thrived on the

efforts of a few effective non-careerists who were suppressed

after they succeeded. Like a classic Greek tragedy, suppression

was unavoidable: rescuers could not avoid empowering by their

own successes for which they had come, while ignorant

executives who lost power regained it by suppression. Rescuers

left, loyalists or prospective loyalists were imported and

mostly failed, rescuers came, and so on, enabling continuous

rule by careerist executives over mediocre functioning plants.

My findings support Ficarrotta’s (1988) proposal of the

violation of moral principles as the overall criterion for

careerism; seeking career advance is not a sin, but it becomes

repugnant when one uses low-moral means, often after learning

that only these lead to the top. These findings reiterate the

decisiveness of leaders’ moral impact, in accord with the

saying ‘The fish stinks from the head’, and the impact of the


organizational cultures they shape. Trust-based cultures led by

servant transformational leaders with high-moral integrity, who

are vulnerably involved and enjoy knowledge sharing that

exposes any low-moral advancement efforts, suppress them. Thus

few will try and fewer still succeed, contrary to careerist-

dominated bureaucracies in which low-moral superiors’ practices

enhance careerism (Dalton, 1959; Wilson, 2002). Organizational

research that ignored the study of careerism missed a major

threat to advanced industrial cultures as evidenced by the

recent business scandals: the many ‘parachuted’ ‘star’ CEOs who

remain ignorant of local knowledge and the Boards that choose

them to please Wall Street encourage careerism which breed

crooked business leaders. My findings suggest that such a

‘parachuted’ ‘star’ may initially benignly conceal ignorance,

but often engender a hard-to-stop distrust and ignorance cycle

and low-moral repugnant deeds to defend authority by keeping

ignorance a dark secret.

Psychological leadership research could have hardly untangled

the prevalence of IKCs careerism. It would have faced both

empirical and substantial obstacles: pe’ilim as members of

assumed egalitarian and democratic kibbutzim in which


autocratic careerism is unacceptable would have denied it

except for rare cases (Shapira, 2001, 2008), while as a

repugnant societal sin mostly sinners do not admit it to

themselves much as the ignorant denies ignorance (Kruger and

Dunning, 1999). On the other side of the psychological coin,

altruism would not have explained most of the few non-

careerists whose competencies and habituses encouraged

practices that achieved advance by performance, as in many

egalitarian kibbutz work units. This suggests that managerial

ignorance was a prime reason for careerism, but organizational

knowledge and learning research avoids its study (Reberts,

2013; Shapira, Submitted); in view of the decisiveness found

here it clearly merits research.

The findings have practical implications. First is the need

to prevent oligarchization of both IKCs and business firms by

proper succession of CEOs. Succession encouraged by ‘Golden

Parachutes’ is oligarchic; these are allotted independently of

a CEO’s functioning on the job by the directorate with no say

to non-director executives and managers who know best whether

s/he deserved this generosity or not. Democratic succession can

prevent oligarchization and discourage careerism, succession


decided by periodic tests of trust in a leader by a

constituency that includes beside directors many knowledgeable

insiders. While resembling reelection of US presidents, the

many cases of successful leaders who managed to function

effectively for more than eight years encourages allowing CEOs

more than two terms. This is plausible by allowing up to four

terms for those trusted by extra large majorities, over 67% for

a third term and over 88% for a fourth term (Shapira, 2008, Ch.

18, 2013).

Secondly, new yardsticks for executive nominations can

minimize careerism:

1. Having, a strong habitus of vulnerable involvement aimed

at learning local problems,

2. Having referred and interactional expertises (Collins and

Evans, 2007) that accord firm’s major problems,

3. Previous successful trustful servant transformational

leadership.

These yardsticks may also be useful for comparing insider

versus outsider candidates, but further study of their relative

weight in forecasting who among candidates will be a non-

careerist executive is in order. Research is also required of


the relative weight of each of the four factors that impact

careerism according to findings: The relevance of one’s

expertises, the existence of proper habituses, career prospects

of careerists vs. non-careerists, and organizational contexts

that encourage one choice or the other.

A radical change of attitude to the study of managerial

careerism is required. Much research has been recently devoted

to managerial ethics and organizational trust, but only little

to low-moral distrusted careerists, though they are common

according to cited literature and in view of the many outsider

ineffective CEOs (Khurana, 2002). Survey research is bound to

fail studying this dark secret, unlike the study of employees’

careerism (Aryee and Chen, 2004). In order to achieve an

organizational science that matters (Flyvbjerg, 2006), one that

copes with a major troubling societal question such as

careerism, there is need for more ethnographies with thicker

descriptions stemming from longitudinal fieldwork with the

study of cultures’ contexts. Such studies do not have to take

decades but they must be much longer and extensive than usual

ethnography, and they must be phronetic, seeking a concrete,

practical and ethical answer to major troubling questions


concerning power-holders of one’s society, much as the Aalborg

Project was for Flyvbjerg (2006) and the study of kibbutz

society for me (Shapira, 2012).

Acknowledgment

I wish to thank Bryan Poulin, Joseph Raelin and five anonymous

reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of

this article.

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Not Enough Thick Organizational Ethnography for Penetrating Managers Careerism

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