Dysfunctional Organizations: How to Remove Obstacles to Psychological Safety

Dysfunctional Organizations

Dysfunctional Organizations

How to Remove Obstacles to Psychological Safety

David D. Van Fleet

Dysfunctional Organizations: How to Remove Obstacles to

Psychological Safety

Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2024

Cover design by Charlene Kronstedt

Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2024 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-602-9 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-603-6 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior Collection

First edition: 2024

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Description

Dysfunctional organizations result from the behavior of individuals and the culture they develop. Many American workers have directly experienced some form of dysfunctional behavior while at work, including trauma from nonfatal workplace violence. Bullying and harassment, violence, unsafe work practices, and other unacceptable workplace behaviors pose significant problems and result in dysfunctional organizations.

To deal with these unacceptable behaviors and to prevent organizations from becoming dysfunctional, psychological safety is recommended. Psychological safety is not the only way to prevent dysfunctional organizations, but it is a critical way. This book outlines in simple and direct words the major forms of behavior that act as obstacles to developing psychological safety in organizations as well as how safety efforts also impact psychological safety. Then it provides practical guidance for what can and should be done to remove those obstacles.

To assist in that guidance, a unique framework (V-REEL) is outlined to enable you to better understand how and why certain behaviors are associated with dysfunctional organizations. Originally developed as a practical guide for entrepreneurs to think through what they know (and need to know) in order to assess their potential for creating value in their respective environments, the framework is used here to indicate the value of having a psychologically, psychosocially, and physically safe workplace. The use of the framework helps the reader to carefully identify factors that erode or chip away psychologically, psychosocially, and physically safe workplaces as well as those factors that serve to enable or help to create those workplaces.

Keywords

abusive management; bullying; costs; dark side behaviors; dysfunctional; enabling factors; eroding factors; harassment; offender; perpetrator; sex related complaints; terrorism; violent behavior

Contents

Testimonials

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Culture

Chapter 3 People in Organizations

Chapter 4 The Role of Safety

Chapter 5 Bullying and Harassment

Chapter 6 Violence

Chapter 7 Terrorism

Chapter 8 Psychological and Psychosocial Safety

Bibliography

Glossary

About the Author

Index

Testimonials

"Dysfunctional Organizations is a book that is both necessary and likely to remain necessary as long as people form organizations. The presence of dysfunction within organizations is a fact of organizational life that comes with multiple facets. David Van Fleet examines those facets with clarity and precision while offering methods to address and mitigate the dysfunction. His use of the V-REEL framework to provide an overarching model to address dysfunction in organizations is a creative and useful application of the framework that pulls together the factors to both diagnose and treat the dysfunction. This will become another book that I keep as a point of reference for insights when working with managers and executives who want to raise the performance bar in their organizations."—David Flint, Educator, Serial Entrepreneur, Author of Think Beyond Value—Building Strategy to Win (2018, NY: NY, Morgan James Publishing)

"In this book, Dr. Van Fleet brings together his extensive scholarly knowledge and his critical insights to address a challenge of increasing importance facing both business and nonprofit organizations across Western democracies."—Ernie Stark, Former Editor, Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management

"Understanding the causes and consequences of dysfunctional behavior in organizations has continued to grow in importance. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has also been increased awareness of the significance of psychological well-being Dr.a Van Fleet has developed an important perspective on these two constructs, and his book promises to be invaluable to managers everywhere. Indeed, his approach to these issues, combined with his strong expertise, promises a breakthrough book."—Ricky W. Griffin, Distinguished Professor of Management and Blocker Chair in Business, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University

David Van Fleet has penned an intriguing analysis of dysfunctional organizations, replete with insights and guidance for today’s corporate world. As with his previous work, this is a valuable addition to our understanding of modern organizations and their successful management.—Arthur G. Bedeian, Boyd Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University and A&M College

"Frequently, delving into the dynamics of less successful and poor-functioning organizations can be just as enlightening, if not more so, than studying thriving ones In this regard, David Van Fleet embarks on a comprehensive exploration of dysfunctional organizations. I wholeheartedly recommend reading his book, as the invaluable insights he imparts will equip you with the wisdom to navigate the challenges of dysfunctional work environments and, most importantly, steer clear of them altogether."—Christopher P. Neck, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University

My career has been more as a trench guy working in sales and paid largely on commission. Too many owners and managers have their fiefdoms. For me, it was easier to stay below the fray and focus on earning a living. How I wish managers and owners understood the concepts in this book. This subject or book should be a required class for managers and owners.—Steve Nemeth, Realtor—Broker RE/MAXOne

Preface

Dysfunctional organizations exist as a result of the behavior of individuals in those organizations as well as the culture permeated by that behavior (Lagios, Nguyen, Stinglhamber, and Caesens 2022; Alemu 2016; Griffin, O’Leary-Kelly, and Collins 1998). The behavior leading to the dysfunction generally results from forms that violate accepted norms in the workplace and comes in several forms and goes by many names—bullying, harassment (verbal, racial, sexual, sexual orientation, gender, religious, physical, ability-based, age-based), abuse, blaming, criticism, gaslighting, judging, name-calling, threatening, lying, retaliation, mobbing, intimidation, and more. Almost a third of adult Americans (30%) indicate that they have directly experienced some form of such behavior while at work (Namie 2021b).

Among the most common forms of such behavior are bullying and harassment, particularly sexual harassment, workplace violence, and unsafe practices. Bullying is experienced by about 10 to 20 percent of workers (Einarsen et al., 2011; Rayner 2002) and is recognized as an adult workplace problem (Gurchiek 2005). Namie (2021b, 5) reports that two-thirds of adult Americans are familiar with workplace bullying—ranging from a painfully intimate immersion to a superficial recognition of the term without knowing many details. It is not just individuals who are impacted; in extreme cases, the whole organization can be threatened (Goldman 2009, 2010). These behaviors’ impacts are felt both emotionally and physically (see, e.g., Dombeck 2020; Tracy, Lutgen-Sandvik, and Alberts 2006; Lewis 2004; McCarthy and Mayhew 2004; Vaez, Ekberg, and LaFlamme 2004; Rayner, Hoel, and Cooper 2002; Vartia 2001).

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20,050 workers in the private industry experienced trauma from nonfatal workplace violence in 2020 (https://tinyurl.com/ycy2955s). The National Safety Council reports that there were 1,176,340 nonfatal injuries and illnesses that caused a private industry worker to miss at least one day of work in 2020 (https://tinyurl.com/y3k6tbye). Wiefling (2019) refers to this as a global epidemic. Clearly, bullying and harassment, violence, unsafe work practices, and other unacceptable workplace behaviors pose significant problems and are what result in dysfunctional organizations. Numerous books and articles have been written about bullying, harassment, workplace violence, safety, and the many other forms of abusive unacceptable behavior in the workplace (see the Reference section of this book). The plethora of labels and, in many cases, having different labels for the same sort of behavior makes it difficult for organizations to address the problems resulting from those behaviors. As a result, writing distinct policy statements is almost certain to cause confusion when policymakers and legislators need to reach a consensus (Van Fleet and Van Fleet 2022, xi).

Despite the prevalence and impact of these behaviors on organizations, they are seldom reported to management. Identifying and reporting these behaviors does not seem to be influenced by age, gender, experience, language at home, or having been bullied (Van Fleet and Van Fleet 2012). Failing to report may be because individuals feel threatened by the perpetrator if they do so. They may simply not know how or to whom they should report such behaviors. Finally, they keep silent because of a small set of common, largely taken-for-granted beliefs about speaking up at work (Edmonson 2019, 32). As Edmonson (2019, 34) notes, no one was ever fired for silence. So, not reporting any incidents seems to be a safe option, especially for those who were only observers.

To deal with these unacceptable behaviors and to prevent organizations from becoming dysfunctional, scholars and consultants increasingly recommend that organizations create psychological safety. Psychological safety is not the only way to prevent organizations from being dysfunctional organizations, but it is a critical way (Helbig and Norman 2023; Manning 2021; Clark 2020; Edmondson 2019; Radecki, Hull, McCusker, and Ancona 2018). In this book, I indicate what is involved in psychological safety, then drawing on nearly 30 years of my research with my wife (Ella 9/22/1941-8/7/2022) and others, I outline the major forms of behavior that act as obstacles to developing psychological safety in organizations, how safety efforts also impact psychological safety, and what can be done to remove those obstacles.

The Journey

This book is the result of a long scholarly journey. My first work concerned the economic conditions of governmental organizations. But I became curious as to how those organizations were structured, so I turned my attention to organizational arrangements, particularly the span of management or control. But structures are developed by individuals and groups so that, in turn, quickly led me to study organizational behavior. One of the predominant forms of behavior in developing structures would be that of the organization’s leader or leaders. So, I next turned my efforts to studying organizational leaders and leadership in general. Those leadership studies focused on good and or effective and ineffective leadership behaviors with particular emphases on mismanagement and workplace safety. At this point, the linkage between an organization’s leader and the safety of those in the organization became my concern.

As I learned more and more about ineffective leadership and mismanagement, terrorism in the workplace came into focus as an extreme consequence. Then the combination of mismanagement and its negative results led me to refocus my efforts on workplace violence in general. In collaboration with a management consultant who specializes in workplace violence, we developed a book (Nater 2023) focused on reducing or eliminating workplace violence. My late wife and I also collaborated on a book focused on bullying and harassment (Van Fleet and Van Fleet 2022). That effort captured much of our work on those forms of abusive behavior but did not specifically consider psychological safety as a potential part of the solution to reducing those behaviors in the workplace. This book closes that gap and brings it all together and so the journey continues.

Pedagogy

This book can be valuable to a single reader but even more valuable if used in a group or classroom setting where concepts and reactions can be discussed and debated. Each chapter begins by asking you, the reader, to make some notes or form a definition regarding the contents of the chapter based on the chapter’s title. You will be asked to look back on those to compare your thinking after having read the chapter. Each chapter also has a short case designed to highlight and make more relevant the chapter’s contents. Then at the end of each chapter, there is a set of key points or key takeaways designed to both highlight the important points made in the chapter and suggest their use to you as well as your organization. There is also an extensive glossary as well as a bibliography and reading list to assist in your further exploration of dysfunctional organizations.

Acknowledgments

This book is based on the research and opinions of the author and is meant as a source of valuable information for the reader; however, it is not meant as a substitute for direct legal assistance. If such assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

The anecdotes and cases, unless otherwise noted, are based on surveys and correspondence by the author and earlier work, Van Fleet and Van Fleet (2022), Bullying and Harassment at Work: An Innovative Approach to Understanding and Prevention (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing) and Van Fleet and Van Fleet (2014), Violence at Work: What Everyone Should Know (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing).

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Make some notes of what you expect in this chapter. Write down what you feel is a definition of a dysfunctional organization. Keep that definition in mind as you read this chapter.

Definition

What is a dysfunctional organization? One definition is that it is an organization that works in a way that is not consistent with the goal it’s supposed to pursue (Montgomery 2016). Yet, many others would argue that, in the case of a business firm, for example, the organization could be accomplishing its goal of making a profit but still be dysfunctional, in that it is a horrible place to work. Another definition focuses on too much communication and lack of trust (Thomas 2018). While another indicates that a dysfunctional organization is the product of structural, cultural, or leadership patterns that undermine the purpose, health, wholeness, safety, solidarity, and worth of an organization or its stakeholders (Carroll 2016), others also focus on leadership (Cano 2019; Dandira 2012; Alemu 2016; Paul, Strbiak, and Landrum 2002). A dysfunctional organization brings harm or intends to bring harm to its employees or stakeholders (Giacalone and Greenberg 1997, vii). These latter concepts would seem more in line with common usage.

Characteristics

Various authors provide lists that indicate characteristics of dysfunctional organizations. So, as a starting point, consider the diverse characteristics noted in many of these lists. Here are some lists that seem particularly insightful.

Yones at the Institute of International Management (Yones n.d.) provides three extensive lists that would indicate a dysfunctional organization. First, there are dysfunctional leadership symptoms and warning signs:

•Dictatorial Leadership: Management that does not allow disagreements out of insecurity or arrogance.

•No 360-Degree Feedback: There is limited or no leadership performance feedback.

•Personal Agendas: Recruitments, selections, and promotions are based on internal political agendas, for example, hiring friends to guarantee personal loyalty at the expense of other highly performing and more qualified employees.

•Political Compensation: Stock options, bonuses, and perks are not fairly linked to performance.

•Inefficient Use of Resources: Budgets are allocated between business units or departments based on favoritism and power centers rather than actual business needs.

•Empire-Building Practices: Managers believe that the more people they manage and the bigger the budget, the higher the chance that they will be promoted. This results in raging battles around budgets, strategies, and operations.

•Unequal Workload Distribution: You’ll find some departments are underutilized, while other departments are overloaded.

•Too Much Management: There are many management layers in the organization, thus hindering communication and resulting in slower execution.

•Fragmented Organization Efforts: Interdepartmental competition and turf wars between rival managers lead to the emergence of silos, which results in communication gaps. Management silos almost always result in fragmented and duplicated budgets and projects, thus wasting valuable company investments.

•Too Much Talk: Plans are heavy on talk but light on action. In a political corporate culture, image management becomes far more important than actions.

•Ineffective Meetings: Argumentative and heated cross-divisional meetings with discussion and language focusing on point scoring and buck-passing rather than sharing responsibility and collaborating to solve the problem.

•Lack of Collaboration: Every person for himself/herself. A low sense of unity or camaraderie on the team. The key criterion for decision making is What is in it for me?

•Low Productivity: Management wastes more time and energy on internal attack and defense strategies instead of executing the work, innovating, and overcoming challenges. Critical projects fall behind on deadlines, budgets, and performance targets (e.g., sales, market share, quality, and other operational targets).

•Constant Crisis Mode: The management team spends most of its time on firefighting instead of proactive planning for next-generation products and services.

•Morale Deterioration: Muted level of commitment and enthusiasm by other teams. Even successful results cannot be shared and celebrated due to animosity and internal negative competition.

•Backstabbing: Backbiting among executives and managers becomes common and public.

•Highly Stressful Workplace: There is a high rate of absenteeism and a high employee turnover rate.

Then there are bad politics and performance risks:

•When employees feel discriminated against, abused, or unappreciated, they may resort to one or more of the following harmful options:

Defecting to competition

Resort to sabotaging the company, for example, by sharing confidential information with competitors or the media

Employees may become emotionally distant and have no interest in the success of the company

They will display passive–aggressive behaviors, become uncooperative, work less, or produce substandard results

•Key talent will leave the company. Good honest workers generally don’t have the skills or disposition for functioning in a highly political environment.

•The company develops a reputation for being political and an unpleasant place to work, making it more difficult to recruit good talent to compete effectively.

•Employees will lose faith and motivation. When the leadership comes up with good initiatives, they are met with skepticism and resistance. The bottom line: Business performance will suffer. The worst thing that could happen to a company is when the staff loses confidence in the leadership team. The two critical questions every leader must ask:

How many of the previously-listed symptoms are present in our organization, department, or teams?

How best to manage workplace politics and improve team performance?

Something to Think About

A public service agency employs 250 members of whom around 100 have direct face-to-face contact with the public on a daily basis. While the agency provides a number of different services, its primary service is providing information, coordinating research requests of clients, and operating as a clearing house for sizeable research requests and needs of those clients. The day-to-day working environment at the agency was rather turbulent. Some members of the agency strove to be innovative and forecast the needs of clients, but others were content to hold on to the past and responded to things only when requested. These opposing past and future orientations stirred up emotions and caused fear among some. Over time, an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion began to emerge, particularly at the lower levels of the organization. Is this a dysfunctional organization? (Adapted from McConkie 1980).

Finally, it is difficult to treat dysfunctional organizations.

•Many times, the leadership team is part of the political game.

•There is a lack of consensus on the correct strategy: strong conflicting views or conflict of interests.

•New leaders cannot assess who is right or wrong because of a lack of information or misinformation.

•Changing the culture requires performance–rewards system reengineering, which may be faced with serious resistance.

•It takes substantial time and effort to heal the wounds, reestablish broken communications, and rebuild trust and collaboration.

Roumeliotis (2022) also has an extensive list focused on poor leadership. His list is:

•Poor customer service.

•No unique selling/value proposition.

•Operational deficiencies—various ailments and no structure.

•Absence of or very little communication between staff and management.

•Divisions aren’t well coordinated and do not function as a team.

•No transparency—There is hardly any openness from management.

•Unethical practices—short-term selfish objectives in search of market share.

•Lack of proper execution of decisions and new products/services.

•Lack of productivity incentives to boost results and employee morale.

•Creativity is practically nonexistent.

•No clear vision/strategy.

•A weak sales force along with an unattractive compensation plan.

•Favoring nepotism and bias.

•Poor hiring practices.

•Slow/delayed decision making process—too many layers—overwhelming bureaucratic structure.

•High turnover.

•Management is in a state of denial about their organization’s shortcomings—remaining with the dysfunctional status quo.

•No specific and/or stable channel strategy.

•The hidden game—corporate politics—is power played by a handful of individuals for their own benefit to the detriment of their colleagues and the company.