How to (Inadvertently) Sabotage Your Organization
Some of the biggest threats to organizational performance can and do come from within. In an age when companies are told to be agile, to learn from experiments, and to be entrepreneurial, we are still vulnerable to actions — deliberate or unintentional — that stem from timeless human behavior and organizational processes that haven’t changed much in the last century. In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Central Intelligence Agency’s predecessor put together a secret field manual for sabotaging enemy organizations. Lowering employee morale — organizational sabotage — was considered as effective at slowing down an organization’s output as pouring sand into the lubrication systems of its machines. Are today's managers inadvertenyly following the field manual's advice?
Keywords: management practices; effective managers; self-awareness; CIA,; organizational behavior; Management Practices and Processes; Organizations; Behavior; Performance;
Citation:
Thomke, Stefan H. "How to (Inadvertently) Sabotage Your Organization." MIT Sloan Management Review (website) (September 4, 2019). View Details