Reuven Shapira

Western Galilee Academic College, Acre, Israel · Sociology

This article focuses on alternatives to leaders’ constitutional term limits which failed to protect democracy in innumerable countries as they did not reduce incumbency advantages in reelection contests. Such a reduction can achieve a super-majority thresholds escalator for incumbents’ re-election. Research has found that setting super-majority thr...

Outsider executives lacking industry insiders’ tacit know-how, phronesis, and premises of decisions learned and developed on the job and in practitioner communities are common. Phronetic transformational leadership research missed the question of how outsider executives solve the major problem of sharing these subordinates’ exclusive experiential k...

This article focuses on alternatives to leaders' constitutional term limits which failed to protect democracy in innumerable countries as they did not reduce incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Such a reduction can achieve a super-majority thresholds escalator for incumbents' re-election. Research has found that setting super-majority th...

The definitions of leadership continue to be extensively discussed since it is an elusive phenomena. One reason is that successful tenured leadership is a delicate combination of elements and relationships often typified without alluding to changes over time. Leaders’ ineptness in the national arena furthered distrust and deepened crises. Students...

Abstract--Successful leaders tend to reach a dysfunction phase and to become conservative self-serving oligarchic. Polities and large organizations try to prevent this by term limits despite many drawbacks, while corporations use “Golden Parachutes,” a costly measure with major drawbacks as well. Despite much research, the timely succession of lead...

Both moral and phronetic leadership studies largely missed authority-risking trust-creating vulnerable involvement in subordinates' deliberations by moral rebel outsider executives. The latter high-morally expose gaps in subordinates' exclusive phronesis and tacit know-how learned on the job and in practitioner communities, initiating ascending mut...

Outsider executives lacking industry insiders’ tacit know-how, phronesis, and premises of decisions learned and developed on the job and in practitioner communities are common. Phronetic transformational leadership research missed the question of how outsider executives solve the major problem of sharing these subordinates’ exclusive experiential k...

Successful leaders tend to reach a dysfunction phase and to become conservative self-serving oligarchic. Polities and large organizations try to prevent this by term limits despite many drawbacks, while corporations use “Golden Parachutes,” a costly measure with major drawbacks as well. Despite much research, the timely succession of leaders in lar...

Earlier ascending/descending trust spirals have been explained by the job discretion allowed to employees by managers; few have studied such spirals as this has required a bi-directional longitudinal framework. Such a framework has used ethnographies of managers who ‘jumped’ from other organisations and suffered gaps of knowledge that curbed their...

Managers’ jeopardizing authority by ignorance-exposing vulnerable involvement in practitioners’ deliberations is a high-moral trust-creating practice which also enables change by learning job-essential local tacit know-how. Outsider ‘jumper’ executives suffer larger gaps of local know-how than insiders; these gaps encourage covertly concealing mana...

Leadership is a delicate combination of multiple factors; many of these factors change throughout the leader's tenure. According to both oligarchy theory and leadership life cycle theory over time tenured effective innovative leaders tend to become ineffective. Neither term limits nor "Golden Parachutes" solve this problem hence a new solution is o...

Managerial career advancement by “jumping” among firms causes gaps of local knowledge that curbs the psychological safety required to jeopardize managerial authority by exposing these gaps to employees in order to gain their trust and knowledge sharing. “Jumpers” often avoid exposure, rather use detachment/autocracy to conceal these gaps, generatin...

Executives’ unethical behavior research missed how careers of “jumping” between firms causes gaps of job-essential tacit local knowledge that tempts authority defense by avoiding exposure of gaps, encouraging their camouflaging/concealment by either detachment and/or autocratic seduction-coercion that fail managerial job-functioning and bars perfor...

What 'Amoral Careerism and “Jumping:” The Role of Avoidance of Knowledge Gaps Exposure' is about: Recent business scandals encouraged research of executives’ immorality, which missed a major explanation: the common career advancement by “jumping” between firms which causes large gaps of job-essential know-how and phronesis (Greek for practical wis...

Two cases of half-of-a-century democratic movement leaders described by all as charismatic are found initially truly transformational. Then democracy limitation curbed followers’ trust and competing leaders threatened their positions which they defended by radical ideological turns that legitimized autocracy and camouflaged dysfunctional conservati...

Managers who advance by “jumps” among firms suffer large gaps of local know-how and phronesis (Greek for practical wisdom) which subordinates know due to specialized education, practicing jobs, and learning in communities of practitioners. Sharing their knowledge requires a “jumper” to jeopardize his/her authority by ignorance exposure until learni...

Executives’ morality and ethics became major research topics following recent business scandals, but the research missed a major explanation of executives’ immorality: career advancement by “jumping” between firms that causes ignorance of job-pertinent tacit local knowledge, tempting “jumpers” to covertly conceal this ignorance. Generating distrust...

Abstract ‘Jumping’ between firms causes job-knowledge gaps that encourage use of covertly concealed managerial ignorance (hereafter CCMI), defending authority by either detachment and/or autocratic seduction-coercion. CCMI use causes distrust and ignorance cycles, which engender mismanagement that bars performance-based promotion and encourages imm...

This research focused on maintaining egalitarianism and democracy in cooperatives and kibbutzim (pl. of kibbutz) despite oligarchic and conservative tendencies following major successes and immense growth. It examines how leaders’ choice of detached control strategy in order to establish personal authority enhanced these negative tendencies, shapin...

Scholars who found trust to be the most important moderator of transformational leaders’ effects did not allude to trust spiral creation. Others found that managers’ vulnerable involvement in subordinates’ problem-solving generated trust, shaped high-trust innovation-prone local cultures and led to successful organizational change as change leaders...

The explanation of organizational distrust missed covertly concealed managerial ignorance (hereafter: CCMI), a dark secret veiled on organizations’ dark side and facilitated by managers’ unknowing of their own ignorance and by unstudied “jumper” managers’ coping with gaps in local tacit know-how and phronesis (Greek for practical wisdom). Employees...

Executives’ morality and ethics became major research topics after recent business scandals, but research missed a major explanation of executives’ amorality: career advancement by ‘jumping’ between firms, causing ignorance of job-pertinent tacit know-how and phronesis (Greek for practical wisdom) and tempting ‘jumpers’ to use covert concealment of...

Advancement by ‘jumping’ between firms causes job-knowledge gaps that encourage use of covertly concealed managerial ignorance (CCMI for short), defending authority and power by either detachment and/or autocratic seduction-coercion. CCMI use causes distrust and ignorance cycles, which engender mismanagement that bars performance-based promotion an...

Abstract Critics find that social sciences tend to comply with social domination by power elites, which is often low-moral, but the debate on public expectations of social scientists often misses this. The failed kibbutz research illuminates this problem: while supposedly abiding by such expectations, a dominant functionalist scientific coalition w...

The reverence for Stalinism by the main kibbutz movements, which through revolutionary rhetoric helped perpetuate leaders who had reached the dysfunctional phase, was wrongly interpreted. Historians missed leaders’ efforts to induce reverence and its use for their domination, while social researchers missed its enhancement of oligarchic rule. These...

Executives’ morality and ethics became major research topics after recent business scandals, but research missed a major explanation of executives’ amorality: career advancement by ‘jumping’ between firms that causes ignorance of job-pertinent tacit know-how and phronesis (Greek for practical wisdom), tempting ‘jumpers’ to conceal managerial ignora...

תקציר חוקרים, ובמיוחד אנתרופולוגים, נוטים להתמקד בגורמים שבשדה מחקרם ולהחמיץ השפעות קונטקסטואליות. במחקרי "תקרת הזכוכית" העוסקים בקידום נשים, הוחמצה השפעת הקונטקסט של מנהיגויות ותיקות בשלבן הסופי. לפי תיאוריית מחזור חיי מנהיגות זהו שלב אי-היעילות השמרני שהוא אוליגרכי ולא פעם ממושך (Michels, 1959[1915]). בשלב זה, חסרים למנהיגים הישגים וחידושים שמזכי...

Purpose – Organizational research missed managerial ignorance concealment (MIC) and the low-moral careerism (L-MC) it served, leaving a lacuna in managerial stupidity research: MIC serving L-MC was not used to explain this stupidity. The purpose of this paper is to remedy this lacuna. Design/methodology/approach – A semi-native longitudinal multi-...

Executive acquisition of job competence suffers from power tempting its use to conceal ignorance and incompetence as dark secrets and survive in jobs by abuses and subterfuges. Such competence requires sensitivity to the unique contours of circumstances, knowing how to arrive at a well-based judgment in one’s job which inter alia requires local kno...

Concealed managerial ignorance (CMI) is a dark secret that protects managerial authority, a terra incognita that evades customary research methods. A longitudinal semi-native ethnography of automatic processing plants and their parent inter-kibbutz cooperatives by a management-educated ex-manager untangled the dysfunctional rule of outsider executi...

Executive acquisition of job competence suffers from power tempting its use to conceal their ignorance and associated incompetence as dark secrets and to survive in jobs by abuses and subterfuges. Such competence requires sensitivity to the unique contours of circumstances which inter alia require local know-how and phronesis (Greek for practical w...

Critics find that many social scientists comply with domination by power elites. The kibbutz movement led major changes of the Jewish community in Palestine and the Israeli state, but its prime leaders became early conservative self-perpetuators and suppressed critical social research which could have advanced the movement’s aims. This facilitated...

Critics find that major social scientists comply with domination by power elites. However, kibbutz research is a unique case: initial compliance was benign, aimed at helping a progressive social movement in crisis while missing/ignoring leaders’ pernicious self-perpetuation and their suppression of well-intended critical research. Uncritical functi...

Both charismatic and transformational leadership theories explain transformative changes engendered by two leadership types undifferentiated by much research although their originators, Weber and Burns (respectively), analyzed distinct phenomena. Oligarchy theory and leadership life cycle theory (Hambrick and Fukutomi, 1991) predict that with succe...

Longitudinal ethnographies of various units in the kibbutz field plus prime leaders’ historical study discerned a failed charismatic leadership episode, then high-moral transformational leaderships engendered high-trust innovative cultures and exceptional successes and later low-moral oligarchic transactional dysfunctional leaderships. Then researc...

Both charismatic and transformational leadership theories explain transformative changes engendered by two leadership types undifferentiated by much research although their originators, Weber and Burns (respectively), analyzed distinct phenomena. Oligarchy theory and leadership life cycle theory (Hambrick and Fukutomi, 1991) predict that with succe...

To what degree is leaders’ vulnerable involvement in employees’ deliberations essential for effective leadership of inter-kibbutz co-operatives (IKCs)? A unique semi-native anthropology of outsider-managed automatic processing inter-kibbutz plants and parent IKCs suggests that such involvement is essential for creating virtuous trust and learning c...

Two classic ethnographies depicted consecutive plant managers’ shaping of contrary cultures, high-trust and then low-trust in Gouldner’s (1954) case, low-trust and then high-trust in Guest’s (1962) case, pointing to the pivotal role of managers in the shaping of cultures but without theorizing their practices which engendered one or the other cultu...

Systematic managerial ignorance (SMI) is concealed as a dark secret especially to protect the rule of outsider executives. SMI is terra incognita, an unknown land that evades usual research methods. A longitudinal semi-native anthropological study of automatic processing plants by a management educated and experienced insider-outsider ex-manager fo...

A major interest and prime right of talented, educated and expert employees of highly specialized organizations is having fair opportunities to contribute their faculties to problem-solving, decision-making and innovation beyond their specific roles. However, managers’ authority is legitimized by their presumed superior capability for such contribu...

A major interest and right of talented, educated, and expert employees of highly specialized organizations, is having fair opportunities to contribute their faculties to problem-solving, decision-making, and innovation beyond their specific roles. However, managers’ authority is legitimized by presumed superior capability for such contributions; if...

High-trust relationships are essential for effective management of highly specialized organizations. Executives who choose involvement in problem-solving with employees and who become vulnerable by exposing their ignorance of employees’ unique knowledge, especially tacit know-how acquired by experience, problem-solving and innovating in communities...

Research on cooperatives and other democratic work organizations (DWOs) has rarely alluded to the leadership required to retain egalitarian and democratic principles amid success and growth despite the tendency of successful trustful transformational leaders to become dysfunctional self-perpetuators and stop risky innovation that would advance DWO...

High-trust culture proved decisive to engender successful functioning of the plant under shared leadership that also bred major innovation. This culture existed within the context of FOs’ contrasting tradition and despite resistance by prime power-holders who habituated low-trust cultures. It was created by kibbutz members who came to office w...

High-trust relationships are both effective and valuable for managing highly specialized organizations, but their creation requires involved managers who expose ignorance, become vulnerable, and endanger personal authority in order to gain trust, learn by cooperative problem-solving, and innovate for efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability. Suc...

The kibbutz is supposedly a high-trust society, but ethnography of a regional inter-kibbutz organization and its plants, administered by kibbutz members and operated by hired employees exposed negative managerial practices: amateurism, bluffing, concealing or camouflaging of mistakes and failures, scapegoating, favoritism, etc., which engendered mi...

Co-operatives literature has ignored the leadership factor despite its essentiality for retaining egalitarianism and democracy amid success and growth, and despite the tendency of leaders who succeeded by democratic trust and consent management, to become conservative oligarchic autocrats. Autocracy that makes use of market forces and hierarchy neg...

Organizational cultures affect trust levels but findings are contradictory. Fox’s theory of high- and low-discretion syndromes and Bourdieu’s field, practice, habitus, and capital concepts help explain contradictions by different or changing strategies of superiors, who either trust employees or seduce/coerce them. Conservative transactional leader...

Proper financing is often critical for cooperative development, but banks usually avoid providing it. A federation/consorzi of cooperatives that creates a guarantee fund may help to obtain financing in normal periods, but not in turbulent times which require radical, costly changes. Israeli kibbutzim faced this problem in the 1950s-1960s when they...

Maintaining co-operative principles in large successful co-operatives requires creativity engendered by high-moral trusted innovative leaders who avoid capitalist practices. However, if such leaders are not replaced within 10-16 years, they usually enter conservative dysfunction phase, suppress creativity, concealing and camouflaging introduction o...

Co-operative literature has ignored the leadership factor despite its essentiality for retaining egalitarianism and democracy amid success and growth. Though leadership theory is problematic, when its high-moral types, Greenleaf's (1977) servant leadership and Burns' (1978) transformational leadership, are combined a leadership type emerges that su...

Peripherally located kibbutzim belonged to major social movements which were the cutting edge of Zionism and brought about its success, while centrally located inter-kibbutz Federative Organizations (Herafter: FOs) dominated kibbutzim because of oligarchization that was greatly enhanced by their move to central locations. Kibbutz research failed to...

Why did six decades of kibbutz studies not discover the existence of complex social stratification? This curious blindness is explained by the dominance of a coalition in the study of this complex social field, which includes both kibbutzim and federative organizations. The uniqueness of kibbutzim enabled this coalition to perpetuate a series of pa...

My desire to solve the basic problems of my own society, kibbutz, led me to engage in a "long effort applied to oneself which [has converted]... one's whole view of... the social world" (Bourdieu 1990:16), and this view exposed the true extent of kibbutz misunderstanding by its hundreds of previous researchers. However, if the kibbutz is a venture...

While social research of kibbutz movements has ignored the leadership factor, historians did not use sociological theory to explain phenomena that negated their egalitarian and democratic ethos: leaders' half-century tenure and reverence of dictatorial USSR. This reverence was a survival strategy of leaders who started out as transformational, but...

What is the connection between leaders' morality and the output performance of organizations? Can their morality explain, through trust, continuity and change of organizational cultures? These questions are fraught with so many complexities that· they can be untied only by Simon's (1992) proposal that organizational research should be analogous to...

“Fresh blood”, executive succession by outsiders, is widely used to enhance innovation. While it is quite clear that a nominee's competence is crucial to innovation, the exact causality is only partially understood. An anthropological study of the behaviours of a complete outsider and an industry-insider suggests they followed different strategies...

A study of four kibbutzim substantiates that there has been a gross misapprehension by the customary kibbutz research of the role played by their federative structure and job rotation of managers in the decline of their high trust, democratic culture and managerial creativity. Trust is an alternative to coercion and creates distinct organizational...

What is the connection between leaders’morality and the output performance of organizations? Can their morality explain, through trust, continuity, and change of organizational cultures? Is periodic rotation of managers the right solution for the distrust caused by self-serving conservatism due to Michels's “Iron Law of Oligarchy”? An anthropologic...

”Fresh Blood” Innovation and the Dilemma of Personal Involvement” Creativity and Innovation Management 4, 86-99. Fresh blood”, executive succession by outsiders, is widely used to enhance innovation. While it is quite clear that a nominee’s competenceis are crucial to innovation, the exact causality is only partially understood. An anthropologica...