Camouflaged Aggression in Organizations: A Bimodal Theory 1772124915, 9781772124910

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NUNC COGNOSCO EX PARTE

TRENT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY PRESENTED BY ALEXANDER ABDENNUR

Camouflaged Aggression The Hidden Threat to Individuals and Organizations

Alexander Abdennur

Detselig Enterprises Ltd.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Thomas J. Bata Library

TRENT UNIVERSITY PETERBOROUGH, ONTARIO

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, H-r

DOC

Camouflaged Aggression

© 2000 Alexander Abdennur Canadian Cataloguing Information in Publication Data

Abdennur, Alexander, 1945Camouflaged aggression Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-55059-198-3 1. Aggressiveness (Psychology) 2. Anger in the workplace. I. Title. BF575.A3A26

2000

152.47

C00-910172-1

Detselig Enterprises Ltd. 210-1220 Kensington Rd. N.W. Calgary, Alberta T2N 3P5 Phone: (403) 283-0900/Fax: (403) 283-6947 e-mail: [email protected] www.temerondetselig.com No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities. ISBN 1-55059-198-3 SAN 115-0324 Printed in Canada Cover design by Dean Macdonald & Alvin Choong

Contents

Chapter I: Introduction. A Basic Theoretical Strategy.

7

9

Chapter II: Three Faces Of Aggression. Definition of Aggression.

14

Types of Aggression.

15

Two Modes of Aggression.

16

Confrontational Mode. Non-confrontational Mode. Camouflaged Aggression.

16 17 19

The Two Modes are Qualitatively Different.

21

13

The degree of visibility of the aggressive behavior.21 The ability of the victim to identify the source of the aggressive behavior.21 The time taken to plan the aggressive action.21 The time to carry out the aggressive action.22 The time taken for the injury to take effect on the victim.22 The type of affect that accompanies the aggressive behavior.22 The victim's reaction.22 Differences in likelihood of conflict resolution .... 22 The Two Modes Balance and Contain Each Other. 23 The Implications of the Model for Organizations.

25

A Quantum Hypothesis.

26

Displacement in Camouflaged Aggression.

29

Multi-Directional Aggression.

32

Resonance of Aggression.

32

Warehousing of Aggression.

33

Chapter III: The Paradox Of Modern Society. Bureaucracy. 35 Bureaupathology.

36

Modifications in Bureaucratic Structuring.

38

Organizational Development and Aggression.

39

35

Organizational Complexity.

39

Interdependence of High-Tech Systems.

40

Antisocial Aggression in Organizations. 41 The Strategy of Camouflage.

43

The Bureaucrat as a Camouflaged Animal.

45

A Paradox of Modem Life. 46 Phylogenetic Regression.

48

Ethical Regression.

50

The Consensus on Injustice: Another Stage of Ethical Decline.

54

Organizational Politics and Camouflaged Aggression.

56

Chapter IV: Patterns Of Camouflaged Aggression. Indecision. Rigidity. Time Manipulation. Information. Withdrawal. Inaccessibility. Non-Interference. Entrapment. Undermining the Sense of Security. Bureaucratic Vendetta.

59 59 60 62 65 66 67 68 68 69

The Hydraulic Principle.

70

The Hydraulics of Aggression.

72

The Hydraulics of Camouflaged Aggression.

73

Regressive Aggression.

75

Self-destructiveness in Organizations.

76

Chapter V: Camouflaged Aggression And Personality. Camouflaged Aggression and Personality Disorder.

80

Personality Disorders.

82

Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder.

84

Paranoid Personality Disorder.

84

Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

86

Antisocial Personality Disorder.

89

Histrionic Personality Disorder.

92

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.

93

Avoidant Personality Disorder.

94

59

79

Cocktails of Personality Disorders.

94

Personality Disorders and Voluntary Organizations.

96

Personality Disorders and Political Organizations.

97

Can Camouflaged Aggression Become Addictive?.

99

The Balance Sheet in Personality Disorders.

99

The Impact of Camouflaged Aggression on Health.100 Camouflaged Aggression and "Normal" Personality Organizations.101 Conflict Avoidance as a Generalized Personality Syndrome.101 An Anti-Organizational Personality Type.103 Conclusion.104

Chapter VI: Socio-Cultural Factors In Camouflaged Aggression. .. 107 Alienation.107 Anomie.107 Learning and Cultural Transmission.109 Narcissistic Values.109 Cross-Cultural Importation.Ill Anti-Confrontation Values.113 Violence as Absolutely Bad.113 Confrontation Is a Manifestation of Violence.114 Direct Retaliation Is Revenge.115 Deceit Is Smart .116 Pseudo-Confrontation.118 The Institutionalization of Hypocrisy by Neutralizing Conflict.119 The Non-Confrontational Values of the "Minimal Self".120

Chapter VII: Prevention And Control Of Camouflaged Aggression.123 Balancing the Two Modes.123 Balancing the Two Modes at the Ideological Level.124 Confrontation Is the Ideal Strategy.126 Balancing the Two Modes at the Practical level .... 127 Identification of the Behavior.128

Labeling of the Behavior.129 Identification of the Victim.130 Identification of Injury.131 Identification of the Perpetrator.132 Reducing Learning and Transmission of Camouflaged Aggression.132 Discouraging the Hidden Agenda.133 Ensuring Smooth Management.134 Internal vs. External Management.135 Intervention Focussing on Abnormal Personality Functioning.136 Neurotic Disorders.136 Personality Disorders.138 Other Intervention Strategies.139 Establishing Avenues for Refutation.139 Understanding Bureaucratic Intransigence.140 Understanding Bureaucratic Avoidance of Responsibility.142 Which is More Viable, an Ethical or a Philosophical Perspective?.144 Combat Philosophy.146

Conclusion.148 Glossary: Concepts in the Book.151 Labels for Some Forms of Camouflaged Aggression.155 Techniques of Camouflaged Aggression.156

References.157

CHAPTER I Introduction

The purpose of this book is to identify a strategy for the expres¬ sion of aggression within organizations which perpetuates certain forms of antisocial behavior. Aggression expressed through this strategy is an everyday occurrence in enterprises ranging from small businesses to multi-national corporations. It is prevalent in local schools and internationally-renowned universities. It is a pervasive and destructive behavior in corporations, hospitals, prisons and government offices. It drastically reduces organizational efficiency and productivity. It destroys the morale, efficiency and personal well-being of the individuals who work in organizations. It angers the organization's clients, makes them resentful and antagonistic, and leads them to avoid having further involvement with it. This book will identify a form of aggression which has greatly increased in frequency and variety as humans have become more organized and as their organizations have become more complex. It is not new. It has been practiced for millions of years by various low¬ er species of animals and even by insects and single-celled organ¬ isms as they struggled to survive. It is a form of aggression now practiced by countless individuals who must survive in modern organizations. Most previous research on aggression in the workplace has focussed on violence (Gapozzoli & McVey, 1996; Kelleher, 1996,1997; Vanderbas & Bulatao, 1996). Little interest has been shown in other forms of workplace aggression which, though not as easily identifi¬ able as violence, are much prevalent and destructive. The dramatic nature of aggression expressed in violent actions captures the atten¬ tion of researchers and the media, who have created the impression that violence is the only form of aggression that occurs in organiza¬ tions. It is well known in academic circles that violent aggression in the workplace and outside of it has been decreasing in frequency over the past three decades. However, the topic of violence remains the pre-occupation of many organizational analysts who, while busi¬ ly documenting cases of violence, have apparently failed to notice the rapid escalation of a more subtle and insidious form of aggres¬ sion that now permeates many workplaces - camouflaged aggression.

7

8 Camouflaged Aggression Camouflaged aggression is very different from violent aggres¬ sion. It is expressed in such a way that we may not be able to identi¬ fy the victim or the villain, and the harmful effects of it, though high¬ ly injurious to individuals and organizations, are seldom immediate, direct or apparent. The aggressor's intention is seldom obvious; the aggressive quality of the act is masked. Camouflaged aggression is not only accepted and condoned, but usually encouraged by the organization's structures and by the actions of the organization's managers. The managers and members of the organization may not even realize that they engage in such aggression, even while they suffer from the considerable harm it inflicts. Camouflaged aggression is antisocial behavior which can engen¬ der deviant, pathological and even criminal behavior in members of an organization. Its victims may experience mental health problems, marital and family conflict, addiction, debilitating stress and chron¬ ic illness. Its effects for the organization are not only low morale, cynicism, apathy, detachment and increased absenteeism, but also decreased creativity and productivity, employee theft, work sabo¬ tage, vandalism and even explosive violence. Few organizations and few individuals are immune to the deleterious effects of this form of aggression. Although camouflaged aggression is widespread, it has seldom been recognized as a form of aggression or researched as such. Only recently have researchers acknowledged its pervasiveness in the workplace. For example, Bjorkqvist, Osterman and Lagerspetz (1994) reported that covert forms of aggression are widespread and are often preferred by would-be aggressors to more direct, overt forms. On the basis of their own "limited" research, Baron and Neuman (1996) believe that "the overwhelming majority of acts of workplace aggression are far more subtle, tending, in general, to be indirect and passive rather than direct and active" (quoted by Neuman & Baron, 1997, p. 61). Although camouflaged aggression is beginning to be recog¬ nized, its capacity for organizational destruction and personal harm has seldom been understood in broader organizational and social contexts. More commonly, the extensive variety of acts that consti¬ tute camouflaged aggression have not been viewed as aggression at all. In many organizations this form of aggression has been tolerat¬ ed or promoted. In some, it is not only accepted, it is required. Camouflaged aggression may be a consequence of how people are organized and how their behavior is managed, manipulated and

Introduction 9 controlled within organizations. Although it is a product of the operation of the modern formal organization, its presence is not inevitable. As I hope to show in this book, it is identifiable, pre¬ dictable, controllable and preventable. The purpose of this book is not only to identify this form of aggression and its effects, but also to account for its general dynam¬ ics by means of a theoretical model. An adequate theory is necessary to research this subtle organizational phenomenon, with its farreaching implications, and for guiding intervention procedures. Perhaps the tardiness in recognizing and researching camouflaged aggression is attributable to the absence of theoretical constructs to analyze this masked phenomenon. I also seek to teach the reader how to recognize camouflaged aggression in its various manifestations, to identify the kinds of indi¬ viduals who are most likely to use it and the kinds of organization¬ al styles, norms, procedures and structures which are most likely to encourage it. I further seek to indicate how readers can avoid its harmful effects on their mental and physical health and their careers, and take effective action to control and prevent it from harming their colleagues and the organization in which they function. It is also my intention to make readers aware of when they them¬ selves are the aggressors. Many readers perceive camouflaged aggression as a pro-social interpersonal skill, one they believe is nec¬ essary for their survival. It is not.

A Basic Theoretical Strategy An important distinction often exists between two levels of cau¬ sation in aggression: the goals and motives for aggression; and the dynamic forms aggression takes in responding to or realizing these goals and motives. This distinction was emphasized as a fundamen¬ tal principle in ethology by Lorenz (1966) who argued that attempts to answer the question, "what is it for?" should not be confused with attempts to answer the question, "how?" Lorenz observed that although goals such as feeding, copulation and self-preservation may direct behavior in a certain direction, they do not fully explain the form that the behavior takes. The form or actual structure of the occurring behaviors may not be adequately accounted for in terms of the dominant drive-motive. The resultant behavior of the animal may be also influenced by other autonomous phylogenetic processes, such as those found in ritualization.

10 Camouflaged Aggression Similarly, in human aggressive behavior, motives such as pow¬ er, greed or revenge carry with them many conscious and uncon¬ scious psychological sub-motives which, together with environmen¬ tal structures and constraints, condition the final form of expression. Thus, in accounting for a certain expression of aggression, it is important to distinguish between the two levels of causation: one belonging to source-motives, goals and their realization; the other belonging to dynamics of expression that may be significantly inde¬ pendent of the former by virtue of inherent biological or background situational factors. The "what for?" level of causation should not be confused or confounded with the "how?" level. The primary concern of this inquiry is with certain general dynamics of aggression within the organization and largely pertains to the "how" causation. Causes belonging to source-motives such as frustration, stress, revenge, power consolidation, ego-enhancement, competition, conflict or the mere release of built-up biological ener¬ gy will not be dealt with. These causes have been addressed abun¬ dantly in textbooks on aggression. This book is not intended to be another treatise on aggression, nor does it seek to address specific domains of covert antisocial behavior in organizations, such as lying, employee theft, sabotage, whistle-blowing or fraudulent liti¬ gation (e.g., Giacalone & Greenberg, 1997). The expression of aggressive behavior is bi-modal. The two pro¬ posed modes, the confrontational and the non-confrontational, are observed to be qualitatively different, to balance one another and to permeate all manifestations of aggressive behavior. The modal dynamics of aggressive behavior are particularly altered when they are expressed through the structures of complex formal organiza¬ tions, as in the case of camouflaged aggression. I seek to compre¬ hensively account for the expression of aggression by means of orga¬ nizational structures. To further orient the reader to the proposed modal approach, a study on employee sabotage will be briefly described. Clemson (1994) described twelve motivations for sabotage. Sabotage accord¬ ing to the model proposed in this book is typically expressed through a covert or non-confrontational mode. If such employees are encouraged and given the opportunity to express their anger and hostility openly (i.e., through a confrontational mode), then most of the motives listed by Clemson cease to matter as employees resort to direct alternatives of expression. Furthermore, a focus on modal intervention will downplay the importance of recommendations

Introduction 11 such as improving security, limiting access and improving the abili¬ ty to trace sabotage. The approach of this text stresses the dynamic understanding of camouflaged aggression as part of a combat strategy against this form of antisocial behavior. Theoretical understanding and depic¬ tion of the behavior in question, both at the organizational and the socio-cultural levels, is more effective, at this stage, than the appeal to prescriptive ethical standards or to detailed "how to" program¬ ming. I propose to challenge camouflaged aggression based on a dynamic and comprehensive understanding and on the promotion of general strategies based on confrontation.

CHAPTER II Three Faces of Aggression

Hayakawa (1978) has argued that the word "aggression" is a "linguistic casualty of overuse" because it refers to so many differ¬ ent behaviors, attitudes, emotions and motivations that its meaning has been lost. Although one can understand the concern for seman¬ tic purity, I believe that the word has been applied not too widely but too narrowly. I use the term "camouflaged aggression" to refer to behaviors seldom considered aggressive, but which are much more injurious to individuals and organizations than any of the commonly recog¬ nized forms of aggression. Camouflaged aggression is a daily expe¬ rience of literally millions of people, who may not even realize that they are being injured, by whom, when, where, how or why. There are two major factors that contribute to the reason various acts of aggression go unrecognized: 1. The term "aggression" has traditionally been applied to behavior where an aggressor could be identified (if detected) and where the connection between the perpetrator's action and the victim's injury is apparent. 2. The term "aggression" has often been used as a synonym for "violence." "Aggression" has come to be mistakenly thought to refer only to hostile and injurious physical acts, such as war and physical assault. I believe that the term "violence" should be reserved for such physically injurious behaviors and "aggression" should be used as a more general term which refers to any behavior which is intentionally harmful, and that "violence" should be seen as one form of aggression but by no means the only or most prevalent form. The tendency to refer to any and all forms of injury, coercion or control as "violence" may have helped people to appreciate that behavior need not be physically injurious to be harmful. For exam¬ ple, poverty has been identified by Van Soest (1997) as a form of vio¬ lence. However, the departure from the traditional meaning of the term "violence" has engendered both semantic and conceptual con¬ fusion.

IS

24 Camouflaged Aggression Extending the term "violence” beyond its customary meaning may actually have served to perpetuate a serious misconception: that non-physical and passive forms of aggression are less serious and less problematic than physical and active ones. Aggression is much more likely to be expressed in non-violent ways (i.e., in non¬ physical ways), and in a wide variety of ways that can be much more harmful than violence. Violence in organizations is relatively rare; aggression is not. Non-violent aggression can be more destructive.

Definition of Aggression Arnold Buss (1961) considered a behavior to constitute aggres¬ sion whenever "one individual delivers noxious stimuli to another " (p. 9). Berkowitz (1962) later revised Buss' statement by defining aggression as any behavior the intent of which is to harm. By adding intention, his revised definition served to correct a problem associ¬ ated with more restricted behavioral definitions such as Buss', which included unintentional accidents and excluded intentional acts that fail to do harm. In an attempt to improve on the former definitions, Baron (1977) proposed the following definition: "Aggression is any form of behavior directed towards the goal of harming or injuring another living being, who is motivated to avoid such treatment" (p. 7). In an attempt to further improve on the foregoing definitions, some authors (e.g., Mummendy, Linneweber & Loescheper, 1984; Ferguson & Rule, 1983) have argued that labelling a behavior as aggression requires taking into consideration the perspectives of the two parties involved in the interaction. They reason that it is neces¬ sary to examine both the intentions of the perpetrator and the per¬ ceptions and evaluations of the victim. Such authors have added that to be labelled as "aggression," the behavior must represent a violation of some norm. Clearly, the perpetrator's and the victim's evaluation of the acceptability of a behavior may influence the intensity, the form and the effect of the behavior. However, behavior can be injurious regardless of whether or not the perpetrator or the victim believe that the behavior is acceptable. It also can be injurious regardless of whether they are aware that the behavior is harmful or potentially

Three Faces of Aggression 15 harmful. Finally, it also can be injurious regardless of whether either is aware that the intention of the behavior is harmful. Baron's definition does not exclude the following aspects of aggression, essential to understanding camouflaged aggression:

1. 2.

aggression involves both intent and potential harm the intent to aggress may be unconscious

3. aggression may involve either action or inaction 4. making others suffer can be both a goal and a consequence of aggression. The following definition will serve the purpose of the present inquiry: Aggression is any action or inaction directed by an individual towards the conscious or unconscious goal of making other individuals suf¬ fer.

Types of Aggression Buss (1971) and Berkowitz (1989) have drawn attention to the fact that aggression can take different forms. Berkowitz proposed two systems of aggression: reactive and instrumental aggression. Buss' classification was similar. He distinguished anger aggression and instrumental aggression. The former is aggressive behavior which is engendered by emotion. The latter is aggressive behavior which is directed toward achieving goals. Buss considered instru¬ mental aggression to be more important and described it as includ¬ ing acts of aggression which could be physical or verbal, active or passive, and direct or indirect. The classification of aggressive behavior adopted in this book is consistent with that of Buss; how¬ ever, it goes further by suggesting how the modes of expression of aggression can be differentiated and classified. An important distinction was presented in the previous chapter between two levels of causation: the level of motivational sources and that of dynamic expression. The model proposed in this text focuses not on the motivational causation, but on how organization¬ al structures, interacting with psychological factors, causally influ¬ ence or determine the expression of aggression. Regardless of the motive behind an aggressive act and whether it is the result of frus¬ tration, retaliation, ego-enhancement, financial gain, power consoli¬ dation, safety, coercion or the simple expression of built-up biologi¬ cal tension, aggression may involve underlying structural and biopsychological dynamics (e.g., the proposed modal dynamics)

26 Camouflaged Aggression that need to be separately accounted for. Also, generalized dynam¬ ics belonging to the aggressive drive need to be examined when they are expressed within the organization. The following are three gen¬ eralized and pervasive principles of the aggressive drive that have particular influence on the expression of camouflaged aggression within organizations.

1.

an increase in the arousal of aggression is followed by a need for release through behavioral expression (catharsis relation¬ ship);

2.

aggression may be expressed directly at the source of the instigation or indirectly against a person(s) or object other than the instigating source of the aggression (displacement or redirection relationship);

3.

aggression seeks expression at the point of least resistance (hydraulic relationship).

The above three relationships are supported by many studies reported in the psychological and ethological literature (e.g., Tedesche & Felson, 1994; Tedeschi & Norman, 1985; Lorenz, 1981).

Two Modes of Aggression Fundamental to the theoretical model presented in this book is the recognition that aggression can be expressed in two opposite modes: confrontational and non-confrontational. These can be expressed through physical, verbal, cognitive and emotional medi¬ ums.

Confrontational Mode In the confrontational mode, aggression is expressed manifestly, directly, actively, deliberately and consciously. For example, if you physically assault your supervisors, your behavior would clearly con¬ stitute a confrontational form of aggressive behavior. It would also be confrontational if you verbally criticized them, or rebuked, insult¬ ed or ridiculed them, or if you demeaned them by non-verbal expres¬ sions of disrespect, disgust, hostility, antagonism or threat. Confrontation brings the social and the psychological compo¬ nents of aggressive behavior into conscious awareness; the aggres¬ sive activity or methods of delivery are manifest. The author of the aggressive act, its recipient and the type of injury are identifiable. The intention to aggress and the personal responsibility for it are

Three Faces of Aggression 17 also easy to discern. Blame can also be attributed. The response to confrontational aggression is often prompt, which makes explicit the conflict that may have engendered the aggression. The often present anger and hostility help to identify and energize the protagonists. As a result, confrontation may escalate conflict, but at the same time, it may mobilize efforts to resolve it.

Non-Confrontational Mode Some social and psychological components of aggression can be suppressed or denied, but aggression will not go away; like a chameleon, it only changes its appearance. We can express our aggressive feelings towards individuals and make them suffer without confronting them or even letting them become aware that we have any such feelings. We can harm them without their knowing that we intended to do so. We are familiar with the underlying aggressive quality of behav¬ iors such as being overly solicitous, or being too apologetic, or being too helpful and the like. Such behavior has been labelled passiveaggressive (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). Injuries which are a result of an individual making "uninten¬ tional errors" or "forgetting" or "not realizing" or "misplacing" are often a consequence of passive-aggressive behavior. Loved ones who are "unavoidably" busy or absent when we most need them may be expressing aggression in a passive way which allows them to make us suffer without confronting us or acknowledging that they have negative feelings toward us. A typical example of everyday passive-aggression involved a study that recorded time taken to use a public telephone and pull out of a street parking space. The study found that people took more time on the telephone when there was someone waiting to use it. Similarly, individuals pulling out of a parking space took more time when someone was impatiently waiting to take the space they were proceeding to vacate; they suddenly become preoccupied with attending to several tasks, such as adjusting the seat, the mirror or the seat belt. Such behavior is illustrative of passive-aggression, employing delay as an instrument of aggression. Another example of passive-aggression, one in which I was the victim, took place at the cognitive medium. An acquaintance of mine used to engage me in lengthy and detailed discourses, often on pedantic subjects. In such discourse, when a subject becomes thor-

18 Camouflaged Aggression oughly covered, there is a pressing mental need to draw concluding remarks in order to achieve closure. At this particular point, my acquaintance would slip into another topic, thus frustrating my quest for mental closure. His cognitive mischief blocked what Gestaltists believe is a normal pattern in the brain for closure. Aggression is often expressed through inaction. For example, failing to express one's aggressive feelings can create just as much suffering as a loud and clear expression of aggression (a fact to which many spouses can testify). Passive-aggressive behavior can take many forms, all of which are non-confrontational; they involve actions which convey no obvious negative feelings toward the par¬ ties they injure and appear on the surface to be devoid of any hostile intention or malice on the part of the aggressor. Most forms of pas¬ sive-aggressive behavior in interpersonal relations have remained virtually the same for generations and have come to be easily recog¬ nized and understood. However, some non-confrontational expressions of aggression are not at all passive. For example, a common strategy of inmates working in prison kitchens, who wish to express their hostility to their guards without running the risk of assaulting them, is to uri¬ nate in the food which finds its way to the staff dining room. In more civilized society, one alternative to assaulting people is to introduce viruses into their computers. In each of these cases, the intentions of the aggressors are clear, but they achieve the expression of their aggressive goals without having to confront their victim. There is nothing passive about their behavior. Non-confrontational aggression can also be expressed verbally. For example, rather than criticizing someone directly or openly, an individual may indulge in the more common and less confronta¬ tional practice of spreading malicious gossip about the person among his/her friends. Ross (1999) has referred to such active forms of non-confrontational aggression as interpersonal sabotage. Non-confrontational aggression involves techniques of manipu¬ lation, subterfuge and false pretence. In contrast to confrontation, the primary feature of non-confrontational aggression is the perpe¬ trators' attempt to mask their aggressive intent and to hide their per¬ sonal responsibility. However, in many cases the injury is still iden¬ tifiable and the perpetrator may eventually be traced.

Three Faces of Aggression 19

Camouflaged Aggression The proliferation of formal organizations and their increasing complexity has both expanded the avenues for the delivery and the masking of aggression and increased the variety of behaviors, strategies and techniques for expressing aggression in a non-confrontational, camouflaged form. The development of organizations has enabled and encouraged the expression of aggression to "progress" to the point where not only can the perpetrator and his intention be masked, but the injury experienced by the victim cannot be attributed to the perpetrator and may not even be thought to be a consequence of aggression at all. There may be no identifiable aggression and no identifiable aggressor; both are hidden, masked or camouflaged. Victims may attribute their suffering to people or events other than their attacker's behavior. They may blame fate, chance or circumstances over which they have no control. The aggressor is safe from detection and retaliation from the victim. Victims not only suffer by virtue of the harm they experience, but also by virtue of the fact that they feel powerless to respond. Organizations have removed the necessity for individuals to resolve conflicts between themselves; that is what committees, tri¬ bunals and courts are for. Conflicts between citizens are no longer likely to be resolved by individuals openly and directly confronting one another; that has become the responsibility of lawyers. Briefs and motions have become the vehicle for the expression of aggres¬ sion. Warring parties seldom are allowed to confront each other even when their squabbles reach open court; their hostility is sup¬ pressed by procedures, precedents and manoeuvres that convert the expression of antagonism into legal argument. Antagonists become non-participant observers or mere bystanders in the process. Organized media also provides enormous potential for masking attackers and for blurring the perception of aggressive intent. For example, gossip is no longer limited to our disseminating informa¬ tion to acquaintances; we can readily and anonymously call a reporter and cause the media to pursue an investigation of the muck that we have led them to believe may be the basis of a "story." The "story" is likely to become the focus rather than our personal aggres¬ sive intentions or those of the reporter. Instead of having to take the risk of rebuttal or retaliation by someone whose actions have upset us, we can pass the issue over to "investigative reporters" who vig¬ orously defend (and seek to define) morality and justice for us.

20 Camouflaged Aggression Organizations stimulate camouflaged aggression by mediating conflicts through their formal structures and by enabling these struc¬ tures to be used as weapons and masks for the delivery of aggres¬ sion. This phenomenon has caused a transformation in the experi¬ ence and expression of anger. Anger appears to be suppressed/ diminished in intensity and difficult to invoke. Anger has come to be replaced by more diffuse and protracted feelings such as dissatisfac¬ tion, tension, resentfulness and grudge. As aggression becomes more and more controlled by external and formalized procedures, individuals may come to lose touch with their ability to experience and express anger. This bureaucratization of anger is consistent with the process of alienation described by Feuerbach (1830) and Marx (1844). The essence of this concept is that parts of human emotions and activity, under certain conditions, come to be experienced in an objectified and externalized manner, so that individuals lose their ability to experience these emotions directly and spontaneously. Thus anger, which is a vital human emotion, becomes alienated and less accessi¬ ble to spontaneous use by individuals. The individual is thereby diminished. Novaco (1976) has observed that anger serves important psy¬ chological and social functions. Anger has an energizing function. Anger facilitates directness in expression and has a self-presenta¬ tional function of establishing one's identity as a strong and deter¬ mined person who demands respect and will not tolerate being treated unjustly by others. Anger communicates a commitment to resolving the grievance and orients cognitive processes towards locating blame. Anger is a perfectly natural human emotion. The alienation of anger can engender pathology. When anger becomes alienated, confrontation loses a major ally. The growth in the number and the complexity of formal organi¬ zations has lead to the creation of innumerable structures, rules and procedures designed to integrate and control the individuals who function within the organizations and the many individuals outside it whose lives it impacts. Such environments maximize the necessity for camouflaged aggression and simultaneously create opportuni¬ ties and vehicles for its expression. Organizational policies, structures and rules can be employed as weapons, as protective shields and as smoke-screens. They can be employed to camouflage the aggression, the aggressor, the aggres¬ sive intent, the injury and the victim.

Three Faces of Aggression 21

The Two Modes are Qualitatively Different Although the strategies involved in camouflaged aggression are more complex, more surreptitious and often more destructive than those found in non-confrontational aggression, both are essentially similar in quality and should be viewed as belonging to the same mode. However, confrontational and non-confrontational modes are polar opposites. They differ qualitatively from one another both in terms of their method of delivery and their impact. The following summarizes their major differences:

1. The degree of visibility of the aggressive behavior: Forms of confrontational aggression are generally easier to iden¬ tify than forms of non-confrontational aggression from the stand¬ point of the external observer, the victim and the perpetrator. For example, striking someone is more easily identified as aggression than ignoring an injured person. Forms of confrontational aggres¬ sion such as public slander are more readily identified by the victim than forms of non-confrontational aggression such as malicious gos¬ sip. Forms of confrontational aggression are also easier to identify by the perpetrator. Some non-confrontational aggression can be expressed unconsciously, without the perpetrators even being aware of their actions or of their intention to inflict the considerable anxiety and doubt that their behavior can create. An example is the intermittent display and withholding of affection between spouses.

2. The ability of the victim to identify the source of the aggres¬ sive behavior: Victims of non-confrontational aggression often find it difficult to determine the source of aggression. Identifying the source of aggression is necessary for the attribution of blame. For example, in the case of the withdrawal of affection, the victim may attribute blame to some aspect of themselves rather than to the manipulations of the perpetrator who has led them to experience anxiety or guilt.

3. The time taken to plan the aggressive action: The time needed to prepare for non-confrontational aggressive acts is often longer than that needed for direct, confrontational ones.

22 Camouflaged. Aggression Many acts of non-confrontational aggression require time to con¬ spire. Character assassination, for example, takes more time to achieve than does direct insult.

4. The time to carry out the aggressive action: The time taken to express non-confrontational aggressive acts is usually longer than that required for confrontational aggression. For example, it takes less time to interrupt a speaker in order to express one's disagreement than it does to disrupt the speaker by asking fre¬ quent and apparently valuable but truly irrelevant questions. Deliberate misunderstanding is a common ploy of the saboteur who, feigning interest, succeeds in making speakers think they are not expressing themselves clearly (or that what the speaker is saying makes little sense).

5. The time taken for the injury to take effect on the victim: The time taken for an injury to be experienced is usually longer in the case of non-confrontational aggression. For example, the harm caused by neglect usually takes a longer time to be experienced as abuse compared with the time taken by the victim to recognize the effects of direct assault.

6. The type of affect that accompanies the aggressive behavior: While anger and hostility tend to be expressed in the confronta¬ tional mode, the absence or the suppression of such emotions tends to be characteristic of non-confrontational aggression. The masking of anger by apologetic and friendly expressions usually accompa¬ nies camouflaged aggressive behavior; anger and hostility seldom are apparent.

7. The victim’s reaction: Confrontational behavior is more likely to lead its victims to feel challenged, angry or hostile, whereas the effects of being subjected to camouflaged aggression are more likely to be somewhat vague feelings of distress, confusion and depression.

8. Differences in the likelihood of conflict resolution: Confrontational aggression enables conflict to be consciously experienced by both parties. The overt expression may initially

Three Faces of Aggression 23

heighten the level of conflict, but it often results in release of emo¬ tion followed by speedy attempts at resolution. Conversely, nonconfrontational and camouflaged aggression delays direct and fullfledged conflict and thus is likely to lead, not to resolution, but to prolonged conflict and to the perpetuation of hostility, grudge and vindictiveness (often in a covert form). In short, there are qualitative differences between the two modes in terms of the degree of visibility and communication of aggressive intent, identifying the cause of the injury, the time expended in plan¬ ning and executing the attack, time taken to experience injury, the accompanying affect, the victim's reaction and the likelihood of the resolution of conflict. These modal differences have significant implications for the expression of aggression within organizations.

The Two Modes Balance and Contain Each Other Confrontational and non-confrontationa.1 aggression are essen¬ tially different manifestations of the same underlying drive - a drive to express aggression in some manner. Because they are polar oppo¬ sites, expression in one mode will tend to limit or prevent expression in the other mode. In short, a high level of the expression of aggres¬ sion through one mode is likely to be associated with a correspon¬ ding low-level of aggression through the other mode and vice-versa. For example, in settings where the means of expressing con¬ frontational aggression become inaccessible, forms of non-confrontational aggression as deceit, cunning, legal artifice and manip¬ ulation are likely to soar. Conversely, a lack of legal sanctions or organizational controls on confrontational aggression (or the inef¬ fectiveness of such controls) will enable direct aggression to increase. Sorel (1907) observed that cunning and deceit tend to increase in times of peace and to decrease during violent conflicts and wars. During the early phase (1975-76) of the civil war in Lebanon, which marked the gradual disintegration of the police forces and the arming of civilian groups, it was observed that the behavior of public servants had suddenly and drastically become civil, polite and prompt (Atallah, 1976); the physical empowerment of civilians seemed to have curtailed the familiar delaying, callous and manipulative styles of the bureaucrats. The strong presence of one mode of aggression can have a containing effect on the other. The same balancing can also be demonstrated at the individual level by observing those who tend to be fixated at either mode, such

24 Camouflaged Aggression Non-Confrontational Mode

Confrontational Mode

I. Physical Medium 1. physically injurious behavior not 1. assault with and on the body (e.g., directly discernible in relation to: per¬ hit, bite, push, pull, confine, disrupt a person's activity by such or other means of physical force)

petrator, injury, and time of com¬ mission (e.g., poisoning, contamin¬ ation, infecting, disrupting, or slow¬ ing a person's activity through indirect physical means)

2. assault with the use of a weapon

2. arrange objects with the aim of al¬ lowing accidents and injuries to happen

3. directly risking someone's life

3. not giving aid when needed

4. taking away or withholding a person's belongings, including

4. sabotaging or losing a person's belongings, "forgetting" to buy food

nourishment, by physical force II. Verbal-Coenitive Medium 1. dissemination of information that 1. swearing at or direct slandering of a person

can harm

2. shouting at

2. insinuations that are subsequently

3. accusing of wrongdoing

3. insinuations conveying culpability

4. verbal threat to physically hurt

4. expressing threat by irony or

understood to convey hostility

through a mask of polite speech 5. presenting adverse information clearly

5. presenting adverse information in an ambiguous manner or as misinfor¬ mation

6. expressing explicitly and

6. indirect expression of position

endorsing a certain polemic or biased

without an explicit assumption of

position

responsibility (e.g., as in prejudiced attitude) 7. gradual or unexpected withdrawal of communication

7. conditional threat to sever communication

8. deliberate misunderstanding and

8. disruption of the flow of a conversation

confusion in communication III. Emotional Medium

1. anger, hostility

1. withdrawal of affect and intentional indifference

2. direct rejection (complete severing

2. intermittent expression of affect

of affect and communication)

and withdrawal of affect

3. appeal to fear (where the verbal,

3. appeal to guilt and anxiety

cognitive, and physical aspects of the threat are explicit) 4. reprimand

4. embarrassment

5. terminating an employee with

5. treating an employee in an

reasons and terms explicitly mode

unsupportive manner until he/she feels ill at ease and leaves

Three Faces of Aggression 25

as passive-aggressive individuals and those with explosive tempers. Evidence gathered from prisons and other institutional settings indi¬ cate that individuals who are non-confrontationally aggressive, such as those with passive-aggressive personality disorders, tend to be most effectively contained by threats belonging to the opposite mode. Confronting passive-aggressives with their behavior through explicit and direct punitive threats tends to curtail their antisocial behavior. Attempts to counteract the antisocial behavior of passiveaggressives with strategies involving covert and bureaucratic manipulation (their preferred mode) appears to be not only ineffec¬ tive, but tends to further stimulate their passive-aggression. Conversely, in the context of a civil war, Masri (1984) documented incidents where the behavior of individuals in a state of vindictive rage tended to be curtailed or displaced from target once the possi¬ bility of legal accountability became real. This balancing and containing impact that each mode has on the other becomes an extremely important issue when we are faced with the problem of controlling non-confrontational and camouflaged aggression in organizations. Chapter seven will elaborate how cam¬ ouflaged aggression can be curtailed by strategies designed to pro¬ mote socially acceptable confrontation.

The Implications of the Model for Organizations Most organizations are open systems that are constantly subject¬ ed to external pressures. In responding to new demands and stres¬ sors, each organization strives to maintain a level of internal equi¬ librium that allows it to function efficiently with minimal disrup¬ tion. Although the organization's managers may not recognize that they are doing so, the actions they take to achieve equilibrium or system integrity necessarily involves them in the management of aggression. Because their actions in doing so are seldom articulated, the interventions are frequently both ill-conceived and ineffective. The internal and external factors that cause conflict and stress within organizations have been extensively researched. Management science has been studying behavior within organiza¬ tions for many years. One of the factors which has not been ade¬ quately addressed is how the organization responds to aggression; how it generates, directs and seeks to control the expression of aggression by its members. This may be due to the preoccupation of researchers and managers alike with the motives of conflict and its

26 Camouflaged Aggression

related personal and organizational parameters. This preoccupation tended to discourage attempts to understand the processes of aggression independently of particular organizational issues and concerns.

A Quantum Hypothesis Within all organizations, there is a quantum of aggression, which varies from organization to organization, and increases or decreases within each organization as a function of the current strength of a multiplicity of stressors, but is relatively stable over time. In keeping with relativity theory, aggression is conceived of as a dynamic quantity of energy. As a quantity of energy, aggression can be stored and expressed in terms of several processes, such as sympathetic nervous system arousal, cognitive-affective attitude, or verbal and physical interaction. When avenues for the expression of aggression are available through both confrontational and non-confrontational modes, the quantum of aggression within the organiza¬ tion can be maintained at a minimal level by virtue of the abovementioned balancing and containing process. In other words, the quantum of aggression within a stable organization can be kept (with all things being equal) at a minimal level when aggression is expressed in optimal ratios through both confrontational and nonconfrontational modes. The model posits that an unbalanced ratio of expression between the two modes can lead not only to the dysfunctional expression of aggression, but also to the augmentation of the overall quantum of aggression within the organization. For example, when confronta¬ tional aggression in the form of physical and verbal behavior is con¬ doned and allowed expression without legal and organizational controls, the reaction of many individuals can become excessive as they become less inhibited in expressing confrontational aggression. As a result, chains of this uni-modal aggression may spread throughout the organization as individuals react in retaliation to perceived threats to their physical safety or to their status and dig¬ nity. This augmentation of confrontational physical and verbal aggression can result from several interacting factors. One factor is the uninterrupted chain of reactions along the same mode. For example, the open exchange of verbal abuse can directly lead to heavy swearing, to threats and to assault. Similarly, slight physical

Three Faces of Aggression 27

pushing or object throwing can rapidly escalate into assault or van¬ dalizing behavior. Another factor can be cognitive. A verbal or phys¬ ical threat may be construed abstractly as an insult to dignity or sta¬ tus and this interpretation may elicit explosive reactions. A third fac¬ tor can be displacement. Emotional and verbal aggression may be displaced to others who immediately perceive it as such and physi¬ cally retaliate against the injustice. Other catalyzing external factors such as personal stressors or political conflicts may enter the picture since organizations are open systems. This typically uni-modally expressed confrontational aggression is more likely to take place in physically-oriented work settings that are undergoing disorganizing conflicts such as strikes and other work disputes. Thus, confronta¬ tional aggression that is not balanced by avenues belonging to the opposite mode tends to escalate both in terms of spread and in terms of overall quantum. The overall quantum of aggression within the organization can also increase as a result of the converse condition, in which aggres¬ sion can be expressed almost exclusively through the non-confrontational mode. This increase in the quantum of aggression tends to occur when confrontation is expressly prohibited by norms and institutional controls, while avenues of non-confrontational aggres¬ sion are left without such control. While a uni-modal expression of aggression augments the spread and the quantum, both modes do not have the same impact on organizations. Confrontational aggres¬ sion is more oriented toward escalation and toward speedy resolu¬ tion of conflict. This dynamic difference can be initially clarified by presenting the Heating Up and Cooling Down model (the "thermody¬ namics" of revenge) by Bies, Tripp and Kramer (1997). According to the above authors, revenge (retaliation) cognitions and behaviors follow a pattern of "heating up" and "cooling down." A precipitating event can spark revenge cognitions and emotions and these can create a heating-up process within the victim, the inten¬ sity and duration of which depends on a variety of cognitive, moti¬ vational and social processes that influence how the event is con¬ strued. If the heat continues to build, the revenge cognitions and motivation will ultimately find some release: a cool down. Cooling down may follow one of four different paths: 1. Venting often involves victims talking heatedly to their co¬ workers about the harm they sustained (i.e., "blowing off steam"). Formal and particularly informal organizational mechanisms for grievance facilitate the venting process.

28 Camouflaged Aggression

2. Dissipation involves the release of emotional energy without targeted revenge behavior. Giving the harm-doer the bene¬ fit of the doubt/' attributing non-personal or external causes to harm-doer, doing nothing out of fear of retaliation, appealing to rationalizations, advocating "don't look back self-economizing and actual forgiveness are ways of mitigat¬ ing and dissipating revenge. 3. Fatigue involves maintaining revenge cognitions and energy for long periods. Individuals in this case do not forgive, for¬ get or "let go." Their rumination about past incidents and regrets about not getting even can become an obsessive pre¬ occupation leading to cynicism and to compromised com¬ mitment to the organization. 4. Explosion is the expending of built-up energy through an overt behavioral action, which on completion may leave the avenger with reduced desire for further revenge. Explosive acts of revenge can assume an escalating direction, as in feuding, which can take forms such as public complaints designed to humiliate the other party, public demands for apology, "bad-mouthing" the harm-doer, verbal threats of retaliation, blocking the harm-doer's goals, mobilizing oppo¬ sition to harm-doer and in some cases, the feud may result in physical violence. The authors also include as explosive acts that target the organization, such as employee theft, sabo¬ tage, whistle-blowing and litigation. Other forms, such as constructive private meetings with the harm-doer, avoiding the harm-doer and transferring to another department, are also viewed as revenge responses. The above model is presented here mainly for the purpose of showing the theoretical inadequacy and the conceptual confusion of an attempt to describe retaliatory aggression without accounting for the mode of its expression. Viewed from the perspective of the con¬ frontational mode, the above-described cooling down patterns, vent¬ ing, dissipation and fatigue, are expected to be minimal. The first confrontational response to the experience of being victimized is a consciousness of the harmful act and a consciousness of the perpe¬ trator/s, including the organizational conditions. This conscious¬ ness, in the confrontational mode, is followed by a challenging strat¬ egy that articulates the issue and directly leads to conflict resolution. Conflict resolution interventions and their normative implications within the work setting are actually the patterns of cooling down.

Three Faces of Aggression 29 Thus from a confrontational perspective and the prompt conflict res¬ olution that follows, this "thermodynamic" model is of little rele¬ vance. The above "thermodynamic" model can be more relevant to the non-confrontational camouflaged aggression mode. Non-confrontation allows the resort to the cooling patterns of venting, dissipation, fatigue and to some of the strategies listed as "explosive," such as sabotage, whistle-blowing and theft. Despite the relevance of the above model to settings that discourage confrontation and direct conflict resolution, it has omitted a major cooling mechanism that is most particular to this setting, namely, displacement. Not all camou¬ flaged aggression can be discharged or contained through the cool¬ ing patterns; a major portion of it is displaced. According to present proposed model, displacement of aggression is the mechanism most responsible for the augmentation of the quantum of aggression in organizations.

Displacement in Camouflaged Aggression A fundamental assumption of this model is the qualitative dif¬ ference of the two modes. Although displacement can be expressed in the confrontational mode, its expression is containable by the con¬ scious and targeted retaliatory response of the victim and the ensu¬ ing conflict resolution practices it engenders. In organizational set¬ tings characterized by extensive avenues for the delivery of camou¬ flaged aggression and by the sanctioning of the non-confrontational mode as the only viable mode of expression, displacement of cam¬ ouflaged aggression is expected to soar. The absence or diminution of the confrontational mode as a normative option, as a structured avenue and as critical consciousness allow displacement of camou¬ flaged aggression to be delivered spontaneously and sometimes unconsciously, and accordingly more extensively. For example, one employee can displace his aggression on several interacting employ¬ ees and each of the recipients can further displace on several others. Displaced aggression can increase geometrically with the result that the overall quantum of aggression may become much greater than it was initially. The increase in the quantum of aggression within an organiza¬ tion can be more specifically illustrated by the following hypotheti¬ cal case. A director in a large corporation, experiencing what he per¬ ceives to be unfair pressure from his board of directors, takes a deep

30 Camouflaged Aggression

breath as he fights to restrain his impulse to tell his board what he thinks of them and strives to lower his blood pressure by suppress¬ ing his anger and acting as though all is well with the world. Unfortunately, his blood pressure begins to rise again as he begins to recognize that his behavior has once more made him appear impotent in the eyes of the board and he realizes that he has not been accorded the respect that his position and his personal image should command. The blow to his self-esteem may create both anxiety and anger, which he cannot vent against the board for fear of inviting a repeat performance. Unable or unwilling to express his anger to the director, the manager may displace his aggression on to co-workers or his subordinates, who are safer targets. These recipients of the manager's aggressive feelings towards his director may follow suit by displacing their aggression on to their co-workers or subordi¬ nates. As a result, the original aggression between the two protago¬ nists spreads widely and insidiously to engender aggression in many others within the organization. If the aggressive feelings which are thereby engendered cannot be expressed within the organization, they may well extend outside, for example, to the vic¬ tims' families. Most of us are familiar with the foregoing phenomenon. However, we may not be aware of how its occurrence is a function of the organization's structures, its intolerance of the confrontation¬ al expression of aggression and its failure to control displaced nonconfrontational aggression. The notion that "violence begets violence" has become an axiom and most organizations have instituted methods to prevent violence. Violent aggression is relatively easy to detect; so is direct confronta¬ tion. Accordingly, it is not very difficult to communicate that such expressions of aggression are not condoned and to institute means to prohibit them. Non-confrontational aggression also begets aggression. Evidence from studies of interaction in a wide variety of settings (reported in Felson & Tedeschi, 1993) indicates that people general¬ ly retaliate against injurious responses directed at them, tending to follow a modified "golden rule": do unto others what they have recent¬ ly done unto you. However, it appears that modern organizations tend to modify the above rule along two dimensions: 1) retaliation should he similar in cjuality - The response to camouflaged aggression is usually carried by means of camouflaged aggression and this stylistic choice is also

Three Faces of Aggression 31 dictated by the vast availability of camouflaged avenues. 2) retalia¬ tion need not be confined to the perpetrator - it can be redirected to oth¬ ers. Few organizations have developed procedures, rules or norms to prevent camouflaged aggression. This is primarily because it is camouflaged. Consequently, camouflaged aggression commonly spreads and accumulates throughout the organization unhindered by any organizational sanction and unopposed by personal morali¬ tyAn alternative approach that our hypothetical director might have taken to his conflict with his board would have been to identi¬ fy and objectively evaluate the board's treatment of him, communi¬ cate his evaluation to the board and then confront them by criticiz¬ ing their conduct in an appropriate but clear manner. He could use a variety of confrontational strategies in reacting to their behavior, by expressing his discontent while he clarifies his position in terms of how their behavior impacts both himself and the organization. Confrontation need not involve rudeness, insult or belligerence. He may not win. His self-esteem may not be bolstered by victory. At least his self-esteem will not have been jeopardized by his having to acknowledge that his behavior was both weak and dishonest and did not credit his position or himself. Moreover, he will have acted fairly because his anger has been directed at the source of his injury rather than shifted elsewhere where it does not belong. A confrontational approach is likely to leave the conflict con¬ tained between the two parties and is less likely to spill beyond the protagonists. Furthermore, confronting the source of the conflict may lead to a more rapid resolution of that conflict since it has been expressed and objectified. Such an approach is, of course, only pos¬ sible in organizations which encourage or at least allow confronta¬ tion. There are three main reasons why the director might wish to avoid confrontation. First, individuals in power may interpret con¬ frontation as personal disrespect and may retaliate in ways which jeopardize the director's future. Second, most of us have an exag¬ gerated and unrealistic perception of the detrimental consequences of confrontation and this type of paranoia tends to increase within bureaucracies, as shall be discussed in chapter three. Third, con¬ frontation has come to be viewed as uncivilized and inappropriate behavior within organizations and the myth has been established

32 Camouflaged Aggression

that confrontation is possible only for those who have power and are not afraid to use it, or lose it.

Multi-directional Aggression Although recipients of displaced aggression, in turn, displace their aggression downward to individuals who are even less likely than themselves to retaliate directly, they may also express aggres¬ sion against those above them. The expression of aggression in this upward direction is likely to be even more camouflaged than aggression which flows downward. For example, subordinates may overload their superiors with information in apparently sincere attempts to keep them informed, or can "gum up the works" by zealously and devotedly ensuring that individuals follow the rules and procedures that the superiors established. The term bureaucratic sabotage can be used to describe such retaliatory camouflaged aggression. Aggression may also be expressed horizontally to peers and colleagues. Thus aggression can become pervasive and thereby stimulate an ever-increasing quantum within the organization.

Resonance of Aggression During the displacement process, aggression may increase in quantum leaps. Displaced aggression can flare up when it meets with specific personality vulnerabilities and disorders, or when an individual receives aggression from multiple sources. For example, upon receiving displaced aggression consistent with a "conspirator¬ ial" interpretation, an individual with some paranoid characteristics may react with a drastic counter-attack of hostility and/or malicious intrigue. Similarly, displacement of camouflaged aggression towards individuals already exposed to much of the same from oth¬ er sources may be the last straw and lead to an intense and wide array of aggressive displacements, such as intentional neglect, sabo¬ tage, provocation and avoidant behavior. Such sudden escalations or quantum leaps of aggression are consistent with the phenomenon of resonance in physics. Resonance refers to a condition in which a vibrating physical system responds with maximum amplitude when it is subjected to a periodic force of the same frequency as its own natural frequency of vibration (Lord, 1986). Various forms of displaced aggression travelling throughout the organization can have particular effects on individuals who, due

Three Faces of Aggression 33 to their particular idiosyncrasies, amplify them and cause aggres¬ sion to resonate with more intensity. (This issue is further discussed in chapter five.)

Warehousing of Aggression There is a third factor responsible for increasing the quantum of aggression within the organization. This is the slow process of cathartic release characteristic of non-confrontational aggression. Non-confrontational aggression represents a highly controlled expression of aggression; one which, by virtue of anger suppression and delay of retaliation, is unlikely to fully drain an individual's store of aggression. Accordingly, organizations can become ware¬ houses of unexpressed aggression. Although this potential aggression may not be directly observ¬ able, it can be readily felt. The feelings of tension and depression that we experience when we step into such settings (often covered by overt placidity) testify to this warehousing of unexpressed aggres¬ sion. This possibility motivates me to speculate whether conditions such as "sick building syndrome," characterized by chronic fatigue, mild depression and respiratory ailments, may in part be the result of a contaminated psychological atmosphere. The physical symp¬ toms may represent kinetic forms of the pent-up and unexpressed aggressive potential. Warehousing of aggression can be seen as having mainly a struc¬ tural potential. Organizations continuously possess or create new conditions, which can render some employees vulnerable to others using these conditions against them. With the presence of an inten¬ tion to aggress, the structural vulnerability is transformed into a state of actual aggression. Often the structural opportunity (as shall be discussed in chapter four) catalyzes the intention to aggress, par¬ ticularly in a state of poor cathartic release. Thus an organization can be seen as a warehouse of potential camouflaged aggression repre¬ sented in its ability to generate and hold organizational conditions that render employees vulnerable.

CHAPTER III The Paradox Of Modern Society

The term "organization" usually evokes the image of a large group of people involved in some type of cooperative activity, with shared goals and some structure which enables communication among its members and control of their activities by various proce¬ dures or rules. It is natural, therefore, to think of organizations as large business corporations. However, smaller organizations are also a very important part of our daily lives. Families, clubs, teams and even pubs all involve organizational behavior. Most of us belong to several organizations. Organizations, whether big or small, direct our behavior through their goals, policies, structures and by the social climate, customs, manners and values they promote and maintain. Accordingly, they tend to shape the form and quality of people's interactions with one another within the organization and influence the attitudes, values and behavior of their members outside of the organization. We all have personal lives but our personal life is inextricably interwoven with our organizational life. Organizations are a major source of our development, productivity and well-being as well as of our frustration, conflict and misery. They control our lives and shape our interests, beliefs and values. They define our humanity.

Bureaucracy Most large, complex organizations are structured into some form of bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is a system of organization and management in which roles and tasks are specialized, relationships among people and positions are controlled by rules, and functions are managed within a hierarchical structure. Although the term has become associated with government, red tape and officialdom, bureaucracy is a normal, logical and, some would argue, essential development of large-scale enterprise. It has been suggested that the growth of organizations has lead to the bureaucratization of society; society itself has become a bureaucracy (Parsons, 1951).

35

36 Camouflaged Aggression

Bureaucrats are not just neck-tied, pin-striped or polyester-clad civil servants. They are anybody who works or lives in a bureaucra¬ cy. That means they are us. The main characteristics of bureaucracy have been described by Weber (1947), who views it as an ideal organizational structure designed to provide maximum efficiency through the optimal appli¬ cation of rationality. Weber's comments refer to a model organiza¬ tion derived from the most characteristic aspects of most organiza¬ tions. The model organization involves a group of people operating under specified standards of activity and output; specified roles defined by an assigned position; specified procedures for respond¬ ing to problems; selection of members and determination of their position based on their technical competence; specified procedures for recording operations, output and problems; articulated career¬ tracking for members; and decision making by specified people in a hierarchical structure, which gives increasingly broader powers to individuals and offices according to their position. These division of labor and coordination functions are referred to as the organization¬ al structure. A fundamental, but seldom articulated rule in bureaucratic organizations is the recognition that the position belongs to the organization and not to the individual who holds the position. The employee is not supposed to use his/her position for personal ends. The employee's power is defined and limited by assigned authority. The effective functioning and the integrity of an organization can be severely compromised by employees who break this rule and use their positions for personal material gain. Most organizations have instituted procedures to detect such corruption and attempt to pre¬ vent it by means of various auditing and surveillance techniques and sanctions. However, procedures for detecting camouflaged aggression have seldom, if ever, been developed.

Bureaupathology Bureaucracy can bring rationality, predictability, stability and efficiency to an enterprise. However, the manner in which bureau¬ cracies operate can be highly dysfunctional. Thompson (1961) called the dysfunctions of bureaucracy "bureaupathology." Dysfunctions include the following: 1. Compulsive rule-following and rule-enforcing, which reduces efficiency and creates the mistaken belief that proce-

The Paradox of Modern Society 37

dures serve as instruments of moral conduct or substitutes for good judgement. 2. Displacement of the organization's service or productivity objectives to the sole objective of maintaining the organiza¬ tion. 3. Conflict between "bureaus/' e.g., professionals vs. adminis¬ trators; workers vs. managers. 4. Hoarding of authority by individuals, which renders others impotent and engenders power jealousy. 5. Delay in decision-making. 6. Bureaucratic obstruction, in which employees retaliate against superiors by using the bureaucracy's procedures to block action. 7. Avoidance of responsibility by bureaucrats, who shift responsibility to other individuals or offices. Bennis (1966) has suggested that bureaucracies are frequently characterized by the following additional problems: 1. Inhibiting personal growth and development of mature per¬ sonalities. 2. Promoting conformity rather than individual creativity. 3. Failing to take into account the "informal organization" and, therefore, failing to anticipate problems. 4. Thwarting innovative ideas because of inadequate or dis¬ torted communication between hierarchical divisions. 5. Producing impersonality, which leads to depersonalization. 6. Shaping individuals' personalities so that they become con¬ ditioned, "organization people" who are overly conforming, dull and non-creative. During the past few years popular writers and practitioners voiced their dissatisfaction with classical bureaucratic structures by referring to consumers' dissatisfaction with the impersonality of large bureaucracies. This discontent is reflected in the widespread appeal of a host of best-selling books whose basic theme is that organizations must be more flexible and need to undergo constant learning and adaptation. Perhaps the best known examples are: In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, by Peters and Waterman (1982) and Reengineering the Corporation (Hammer & Champy, 1993).

38 Camouflaged Aggression

On the other hand, some researchers have defended bureaucra¬ cy. Perrow (1979), for example, criticizes the extensive preoccupa¬ tion with "humanizing" bureaucracies and argues that organiza¬ tions would function well and evolve in a healthy manner without such refinements if bureaucratic principles are adhered to. Robbins (1985) concludes that bureaucracy works regardless of changes in technology and environment and is still effective in a wide range of organized activities. Daft (1989) observes that bureaucracy is the most efficient form of organization available and that it will contin¬ ue, despite some transformations, to be the dominant form of organ¬ ization in the foreseeable future. The problems attributed to bureaupathology are minuscule compared to those associated with lack of organization and the fail¬ ure to ensure that the bureaucracy is run effectively. Bribery, kickbacks, political peddling, individual power brokerage are behaviors that undermine the competence of organizations. Such dysfunction¬ al behaviors represent failures to implement or maintain the funda¬ mental bureaucratic rule which stipulates that a public office belongs to society and is not a property of the incumbent.

Modifications in Bureaucratic Structuring The impact of information technology, advanced technology, diversity and globalization are leading to qualitative changes in the functioning of organizations. Luthans (1995) has drawn attention to the following new trends: a) a "downsizing" of organizations resulting from technology making it possible to do more work with less people; b) a "flattening" of traditional hierarchical structures, which are giving way to a variety of horizontal organizational forms. Networks of specialists and decentralized units and branches with increased autonomy are examples; c) a decline in the number of intermediary levels or middle management and the consolidation and concentration of control made possible by means of information technology; d) technicians, or knowledge workers, are replacing manufac¬ turing operatives as the worker elite; e) organizations are becoming "learning environments" in which work activity is being redefined to include constant

The Paradox of Modern Society 39 learning, more high-order thinking and a reduction of rou¬ tine tasks; f) the paradigm of doing business is shifting from product¬ making to service-providing, with emphasis on continuous redesigning of operations to achieve quality improvements.

Organizational Development and Aggression The changes outlined above indicate a general trend toward decentralization, more administrative autonomy of branches, more reliance on team-work, more participation in decision making, and more empowerment to experts and unit heads. At first glance, these trends might be thought to promote the reduction of camouflaged aggression, since they involve the reduction of intermediaries and the facilitation of access to information. Unfortunately, there is little room for optimism, because advanced technology, downsizing, decentralization and team work may have only little impact on the reduction of organizational formalization. Formalization refers to the degree that organizations standardize behavior through rules, procedures, formal training and related uniform mechanisms. Employees working in a particular unit of a large organization may be less subjected to pyramidal hierarchy and thus may enjoy direct, informal, interpersonal contact with colleagues and superiors, but their work-life will still be regulated and controlled by the formal structures of the parent organization. Formalized policies and pro¬ cedures will continue to regulate and control the daily operations of their work, their income, their promotion, their vacation and their retirement. Furthermore, as I shall argue, the introduction of advanced technology brings its own complex structures, which can create new avenues for the delivery of camouflaged aggression. An understanding of structural complexity will help to further clarify this relationship.

Organizational Complexity One cannot adequately define or describe organizational com¬ plexity by referring to characteristics such as the number of units, or the division of labor and differentiation of function, or the organiza¬ tion's ability to process and store information. The most fundamen¬ tal characteristic of complexity is not the number of parts, functions or bytes of information that constitute the system, rather, it is their

40 Camouflaged Aggression mutual adaptive integration or orchestration. Complexity, therefore, is the property of dynamic systems. The contemporary organization is a complex system that incor¬ porates formal rules and establishes interdependent functions and chains of responsibility that control the spontaneous behavior of members in the interest of the whole. Advanced technology does tend to simplify work procedures and to save time, but it also intro¬ duces new complex structures. These structures can be used as tools for the delivery of camouflaged aggression and can, by virtue of their technological complexity, increase the possibility and the prob¬ ability that aggression will be expressed in more subtle and more masked forms. For example, one can contemplate the confusion, the frustration and the agony that can be engendered by a resentful employee hacking into or sabotaging an organization's computer systems. Advanced technology has also increased the number of posi¬ tions within an organization whose incumbents have opportunities to engage in effective camouflaged aggression. In classical pyrami¬ dal organizations, we would expect the quantity and the impact of camouflaged aggression to increase with the elevation of rank; the higher the rank, the greater are the avenues for delivery of aggres¬ sion and the more effective they can be. However, the advent of organizational "flattening" and increasing technology has enabled junior or low-ranking employees to deliver significant camouflaged aggression. Advanced technology may have made organizations more integrated, but it has also made them more vulnerable. For example, a junior employee working at data input can put the whole organization into a state of chaos by software mischief. A security guard can keep the entire staff locked out by "forgetting" to deacti¬ vate an electronic alarm system.

Interdependence of High-Tech Systems Advanced technology increases complexity, not only by means of their complex systems, but also by means of the interdependency of these systems. Information technology, for example, links many organizations together and at the same time formalizes their inter¬ action. Increased interdependence of complex systems is permeating all of society. Ever increasing demands are being made on small businesses and individuals to operate in accordance with the rules and procedures imposed by the larger organizations. Procedural

The Paradox of Modern Society 41 complexity is permeating all society and all aspects of life as organ¬ izations grow and specialize. Parson's prediction that the growth of organizations will lead to the bureaucratization of society as a whole appears to have been brought to fruition. Formalized rules of proce¬ dure have infiltrated virtually all of our daily activities. Even taking a vacation has become very complex. Packing the car and driving off to the cottage used to be a relatively individual¬ istic and simple task compared to the typical contemporary vaca¬ tion. Planning a vacation nowadays often involves dealing (more or less successfully) with a sometimes dizzying array of factors such as negotiating vacation time with one's employer and peers, selecting a destination, examining time-tables, analyzing various categories of accommodation, tour packages, pricing restrictions, taxes, insur¬ ance, security and the like and reading the fine print of non-refundable contracts. All of these require that we engage in rather complex decision-making, but our decisions are limited and controlled by large numbers of formal organizations who make the rules, organi¬ zations with which we seldom interact except through someone's electronic device. The organizations are often invisible to us and we may not even be allowed to access them except through some inter¬ mediary, but their regulations shape our decision and ultimately take away our power and make us pawns in the vacation chess game. In the simpler days of the family cottage, we could be king or queen. Planning a vacation used to be fun. It is not only the complexity of myriad rules that distresses us, it is also the manner in which those rules are applied by individuals who use them, not for the benefit of the organization, but for the sat¬ isfaction of their own needs, to proclaim their power and to express their aggression. The organizational structures and procedures only provide them with a vehicle.

Antisocial Aggression in Organizations It has been stated that the corporate position is: "for the whitecollar criminal what the gun or knife is for the common criminal - a tool to obtain money from victims" (Wheeler & Rothman, 1982). As we shall see, the corporate position is a tool not only for financial crime, but for crimes against the person. Bureaucrats can use their position in the formal structure and use the formal struc¬ ture itself (its rules, regulations and procedures) as weapons by means of which they deliver aggression.

42 Camouflaged Aggression Their aggression is a special type of antisocial behavior; not one which we normally associate with crime/ but one which is much more prevalent/ socially destructive and deserving of our attention and sanctioning. It is a type of aggression that cannot be committed outside of an organizational setting. The organization brings perpetrators and their victims together and provides the perpetrators with both the opportunity and the tools for their antisocial acts. The organization also allows victims to become perpetrators. Organizations provide an ideal opportunity for the expression of aggression because they provide clearly defined and legitimized positions of personal power. These enable individuals to control oth¬ ers by exercising their power under the guise of fulfilling their assigned duties. They allow us to harm people while we appear to operate in the best interest of the organization. In order to carry out an act which can agonize their victims, for example, subjecting them to intolerable inconvenience, the aggressors only need access to for¬ mal procedures that tie them to the victim and allow them to exer¬ cise aggressive intentions through established "policy," rules and procedures. The aggressive intent is cloaked by the formal structures and procedures of the organization. Organizations, of course, do not grant their members the legal or ethical right to injure people in any direct way, but they place them in positions and equip them with the means whereby they can inflict harm in an organizationally acceptable way; in a non-confrontational, indirect, legitimate and socially-approved way, using the formal structures of the organization to exercise their harmful intentions. This form of antisocial behavior is not only condoned, it is perceived as pro-social. The perpetrator is unlikely to express any intent to hurt the vic¬ tim; that is not necessary. Perpetrators may not even be aware of their aggressive intent; the organization's suppression of confronta¬ tional aggression may be so powerful that even perpetrators may not know they have any intent to harm anyone; they may truly believe they are just doing their job in accordance with procedures. The structures, functions and rules of procedure of most organi¬ zations are likely to guarantee that aggression will not be expressed in an open and confrontational manner. The individual who wishes to express aggression must do so in a non-confrontational way, but also in a way that enables him/her to avoid detection. Sometimes this can be done by indirect means, such as those labeled as "inter-

The Paradox of Modern Society 43 personal sabotage/' which makes the victim think that the injury was accidental or was caused by someone else. Such aggressive acts have become too risky for modern bureaucrats, who have acquired another way to express aggression safe from both detection and dis¬ approval. They mask their intentions under the cloak of duty. Many of their techniques are not readily recognizable as aggres¬ sive; some are very skillfully masked. However, some are obvious. Most of us recognize the deception of the manager who conducts an "exit interview" with an employee he has never liked in which, apol¬ ogizing deeply and sincerely, he verbalizes deep concern for fiscal restraint and personal anguish about its effects on his staff, and extols the qualities the employee can bring to another organization which will better appreciate his or her skills. The real reasons for "terminating" the employee may be entirely personal or non-organizational, but the manager, in conveying "their" decision to the employee, avoids having to deal with the anger "their" decision will spawn by cloaking the real reasons behind a veneer of apology, sym¬ pathy and flattery. Many techniques of camouflaged aggression are not so obvious and many individuals are simply unaware that they are perpetrators or even victims. Camouflaged aggression has two main characteristics: it is decep¬ tive and it enables perpetrators to avoid responsibility for their actions. Avoidance of responsibility is often a self-protective measure aimed at avoiding or minimizing retaliation. Deception is the active elabo¬ ration of basic forms of false pretence. In his book By the Grace of Guile, Rue (1994) proposes a working definition of deception: Deception occurs when a discrepancy between appearance and reality can be attributed in part to the causal influence of another organism. That is, a deceiver is an organism (A) whose agency contributes by design to the ignorance or delusion of another organism (B). Selfdeception may be said to occur when A and B are the same organism (p. 88). Organizations provide a multiplicity of avenues for deception and the complexity of modern organizations has made possible the transformation of deceit into an art-form or a sport.

The Strategy of Camouflage Camouflaged aggression involving non-confrontation and deception have been used throughout history as a way of expressing aggression while avoiding threats to personal safety and survival.

44 Camouflaged Aggression When we think of camouflage, we must go beyond its use in military practice. Camouflage strategies are used in all human interaction, where we wish our true emotions or intentions to be hidden. Many forms of camouflage are employed by animals, birds, fish and insects. In fact, in most species, camouflage is a crucial strategy for survival. Camouflage in the animal world involves altering and obscuring appearance so as to blend with the environment and achieve concealment. Concealment is achieved either by utilizing elements from the environment (hiding or blending) or by altering body characteristics such as skin color and shape. Camouflage in animals can serve three functions: 1. The first function is protecting the animal from being direct¬ ly observed by a predator. This evasive and purely passive function can be observed in insect species. For example, some leaf-eating worms take on the color and shape of the leaf to avoid detection by birds. Another species of worm which inhabits the surface of certain rocks takes on the shape and color of a bird's droppings in order to avoid being observed and eaten by birds. More active forms of evasive behavior can be observed when an organism is faced with danger. Some birds fluff their feathers to appear larger and intimidating; some animals feign injury and some play dead. 2. The second function of camouflage is to facilitate efficient delivery of aggression for predation. Camouflage increases the ability of a predator to surprise and catch its prey. For example, the chameleon's blending with the grass helps it to go unnoticed as it sticks out its tongue and catches unsus¬ pecting flies. The fox's blending with the grass helps it sur¬ prise its unsuspecting prey. Another example is the African bug that covers itself with dead ants in order to gain entry into the ant colony. In cases like the chameleon, camouflage simultaneously serves both functions: to facilitate predation and to avoid detection by predators. This double function of camouflage is found in species that resort to predation and are also the potential victim of preda¬ tion. 3. The third function of camouflage is to protect the predator from the defensive reaction of its prey. Camouflage, by giv¬ ing the predator the advantage of timing and surprise, allows it to catch its victim by surprise and deliver an inca-

The Paradox of Modern Society 45 pacitating or fatal bite before its presence or intention is noticed. Thus, the predator may be spared the potential injury coming from its prey in terms of a retaliatory kick, horn thrust or a desperate bite. The camouflage of the tree on which a leopard lies enables it to zero in on the neck of the deer below and shorten the length of the ensuing struggle.

The Bureaucrat as a Camouflaged Animal Camouflaged aggression expressed through organizational structures has three essential characteristics: a) it is non-confrontational; b) it is masked (deceptive); c) it enables the perpetrator to avoid responsibility and retalia¬ tion. The more numerous and complex organizational structures become, the greater and more complex are the number of avenues for delivering aggression while masking it. Camouflaged aggression by bureaucrats has the same essential features as the camouflage strategies of most animal species. Just as the animal uses its environment to conceal its actions or its presence or its intent, an individual occupying a position in a complex organ¬ ization can use the available rules, regulations and formal proce¬ dures to engage in camouflaged aggression with minimal risk of detection and possible retaliation. The organizational predator utilizes the same three strategies of camouflage employed by lower species: 1. First, the bureaucrat can "blend" with the formal structures of the organization so as to disappear as a personal entity. A strong personal presence tends to carry with it the appear¬ ance that one has personal responsibility for decisions which impact other individuals. However, it is always possible for bureaucrats to avoid being seen as powerful (and therefore suspect) by hiding their decision-making responsibility. The tenure of bureaucrats who allow themselves to be seen as powerful is often short. Many minimize their vulnerability by burying their identity in the committee process, where their personal motives can be readily hidden from view and any actions they take are likely to be attributed to the com¬ mittee and not to them personally.

46 Camouflaged Aggression 2. Second, bureaucracies often facilitate aggressive behavior by providing uneven access to the vulnerabilities of certain oth¬ ers. For example, bureaucracies obtain and store a wealth of information about their members, which they believe they must have in order to justify the decisions they take about them. Knowledge is power. Information can enable aggres¬ sors to identify vulnerabilities in their intended victims; to know where and when to attack safely. The bureaucrat's position offers him/her the advantage of access and timing. Thus, bureaucrats may have access to their victim's file; they may have knowledge about who makes decisions about the victim and may have information or a position that enables them to influence that person; they may possess information about such matters as schedules and deadlines, which they can use to ensure the appropriate timing for the delivery of their camouflaged aggression. 3. Third, the formal organizational structures protect individu¬ als from direct retaliatory response by their victims because their hierarchies limit access and because the structures dilute and obscure responsibility. Disgruntled employees or clients may not know what took place, who made the deci¬ sions, who ordered the action, who took the action or why. Decisions may simply reach them "through channels." They may feel the teeth crunching them but be unable to identify the animal who attacked them. Without an identifiable per¬ petrator, victims can only vent their spleen against the organization. Attacking such an amorphous body is not like¬ ly to yield much personal satisfaction. Victims will likely have little success in attributing personal responsibility, which is a requirement for the attribution of blame. Without attributing blame it is difficult to justify retaliation. Besides, most organizations have established controls to protect themselves (and therefore their members) from retaliation.

A Paradox of Modern Life The similarity between camouflaged behavior in organizations and in the biological world is not a mere analogy. Camouflage has been a central strategy in the behavior of all living species, from the simplest forms of life to the most evolved. For example, some virus¬ es can alter their external shape to mimic certain body proteins and thus escape being detected and destroyed by the immune system of

The Paradox of Modern Society 47

the host. Humans have not abandoned camouflage; it is employed in almost all forms of social interaction that seek deception and manip¬ ulation. But what humans have done throughout their evolution is rely more on confrontation and gradually restrict and transcend camouflage in social action. It is the confrontational strategy that accelerated evolutionary trends from mere adaptation to the active transformation of the environment, both physical and social. Physical forms of camouflage were gradually abandoned in the evolution of humans and society as humans acquired skills and tools which enabled them to defend themselves without having to hide. The sense of security provided by forming primitive social organi¬ zations emancipated humans. It enabled them to come out of their caves and escape from their perpetual preoccupation with protect¬ ing themselves from predators. Having achieved the relative securi¬ ty of numbers, they were able to become more open in their hunting and warfare techniques. Obviously, camouflage tactics remain as part of the operations of warfare; however, the primary strategy in warfare is confrontation. Confrontational aggression has been celebrated throughout his¬ tory and has become an ideal value. Most of societies' heroes are warriors. Moreover, most of our cultural symbols express the value of confrontation. The lion and the eagle may have enjoyed such grand symbolic status, not only because of their strength and prowess, but also because they symbolize active aggression rather than passivity, cunning and stealth. We admire them, perhaps envy them their freedom from pre-occupation with self-defense. The lion sleeps twenty hours a day on his behind without the need for pro¬ tecting it; the eagle needs to take no cover as it stands on the branch that is highest and most obvious. The invention of gun powder and guns further enriched the symbolic repertoire of confrontation. The gun in itself is a symbol of confrontation. The gun "speaks loud and clear," "means what it says" and its force travels in a straight line. Only an assassin needs a silencer. Just before the development of effective long range weapons around the early 19th century, soldiers often marched into battle in highly visible formations wearing decorative uniforms - the negation of camouflage. At the cultural level, values of confrontation have, until recently, usually been held in higher esteem than those of cunning and trickery. The bureaucrat is a modern symbol of camouflaged power and it is ironic that, although we may aspire to their positions, we may

48 Camouflaged Aggression

feel contempt for many of them, because we have come to view them as manipulative, deceitful, treacherous and weak. Many bureaucrats who hold very secure positions behave in a most inse¬ cure manner, as they avoid taking an unequivocal and open position on issues and indulge themselves in ambivalence, procrastination and other decision-avoidance tactics. They behave like the camou¬ flaged animal, which reacts to any movement in its environment as a potential threat that invokes a "freeze" or "play dead" defensive reaction. Other bureaucrats may lose our respect when it is clear that the positions they are willing to take on controversial matters are limited to those which do not threaten the status quo. We may rec¬ ognize that they are solely motivated by their need to achieve per¬ sonal invulnerability (and thus perceived omnipotence) and acquire it by blending with the organization so that their personal identity is obfuscated and therefore safe. Techniques for flushing out such incumbents and moving them from this state of blended omnipo¬ tence towards personal accountability will be presented in chapter seven. A fascinating paradox appears to be unfolding in the organiza¬ tional behavior of post-industrial society. This paradox represents a confluence and a functional adaptation between one of the most advanced structures of contemporary society (the formal organiza¬ tion) and one of the most phylogenetically primitive strategies: cam¬ ouflage. Modern organizations are unwittingly resurrecting archaic forms of expressing aggression. The contemporary organization is providing a social "foliage" in which the chameleons, the snakes and spiders among us (and in us) take cover as they prepare to strike. Camouflage is becoming an essential adaptation technique in the most advanced units of contemporary society. The implications of this development for society are far-reaching as a major domain of social behavior appears to be regressing.

Phylogenetic Regression The general meaning of regression is a movement backward and a return to earlier or less mature behaviors or earlier or less mature levels of the organization of behavior. In psychoanalysis, regression is one of the defense mechanisms in which the individual, faced with an anxiety or conflict, returns to a stage or to a behavior that served it well and was safe (Wolman, 1973). Freud (1917) likened the process of regression to an army which has left some of its troops at rear bases and, in the face of a strong enemy, retreats to those previ-

The Paradox of Modern Society 49

ously established bases at the rear. Every regression reactivates the primary mechanisms pertinent to that level. The study of the ancestral succession constituting the evolution¬ ary development of characteristics within a species involves identi¬ fying and tracing what ethologists refer to as "homologies" - similar patterns among species that result from their common ancestry. Lorenz (1981) has observed that forms of behavior can evolve over time in very much the same way as bodily structures evolve over time. Homologies of structure are relatively easy to recognize from anatomical investigation of fossils. Behavioral homologies can be sought only in living species and a judgment of behavioral homolo¬ gy is more complex and requires confirmation of a variety of indi¬ cants, but there is little question that behavioral homologies occur. According to ethologists (e.g., Ebil-Eibesfeledt, 1989), living sys¬ tems owe their behavior at least in part to processes of adaptation through selection. In evolutionary terms, variants brought about by genetic changes are tested as to their adaptability and the genotypes for adaptive traits are retained. This evolution by phylogenetic adaptation is supplemented by adaptation via learning and individ¬ ual experience and, in humans, via traditions. Camouflaged behavior is found in almost every living species from the simplest forms of life to the most complex. In humans, forms of camouflage have been largely abandoned with the evolu¬ tion of society and under normative pressures that aim at tran¬ scending camouflage, although forms of camouflage are still employed at the social level as instrumental deception. Camouflaged behavior in service of self-preservation, predation and aggression expression can be observed as highly homologous in function and in other forms of correspondence, at the human level and at the level of other living species. Ebil-Eibesfeldt (1989) has identified forms of phylogenetic regression in the area of sexual behavior. He has explained certain sexual pathologies, such as sadism and sex without love or affilia¬ tion, as phylogenetic regressions to the archaic "reptilian stage" of agonistic sexuality. In this book, a similar regression in the area of the expression of aggression is hypothesized. The evolution of for¬ mal organizations has created an environment with new structures which discourages individuals from attacking or even confronting each other. Humans have adapted to the inhibition of aggression by an adaptation that has fostered the activation of archaic techniques of camouflage - techniques which are found in almost every living

50 Camouflaged Aggression

species from the simplest forms of life. Society has "evolved" to the point where, in the expression of aggression, we have regressed to forms of behavior that mirror the adaptation of insects and other lower animals, which seek to express aggression without detection.

Ethical Regression Organizational complexity has not only engendered the regres¬ sion to more primitive forms of aggression expression, it has also led to a regression in ethics and values. Many social analysts have drawn attention to the constriction of ethical principles in the operation of organizations (e.g., Jackall, 1987). Attempts at explaining this problem have almost invariably attributed the phenomenon to the nature of bureaucratic relation¬ ships. An example is Jackall's (1987) penetrating analysis of the dif¬ ficulty of realizing personal ethical standards within the corpora¬ tion. The gist of his analysis is that the bureaucracy tends to trans¬ form all moral issues into practical concerns. This is achieved through the organizational process, which gradually redefines or operationalizes individual concerns and aspirations in terms of the corporate context. A major aspect of this process is a commitment to the norms of "pragmatic flexibility," which allow great adaptability at inconsistency and a dexterity in meeting the divergent expecta¬ tions of varied audiences. Pragmatism can supplant the abstract principles found in altruism, liberalism, humanism and most of the other "isms" in modern society. The operational code of conduct in corporations, according to Jackall, involves: 1. you never go around your boss; 2. you tell your boss what he wants to hear; 3. if your boss wants something dropped, you drop it; 4. you are sensitive to your boss's wishes so that you anticipate what he wants - you do not force him, in other words, to act as boss; 5. your job is not to report something that your boss doesn't want reported, but rather to cover it up - you do what your job requires and keep your mouth shut. The guiding abstract notions of allegiance and authority are operationalized in terms of personal relationships. When managers describe their work to an outsider, they first say: "I work for Bill

The Paradox of Modern Society 51

Jones" or "I report to Harry Smith" before they proceed to describe their official functions. According to Jackall, success and failure within the corporation becomes defined as contingent upon culti¬ vated political connections that foster advancement and protect against sudden administrative shakeups or irrational market changes. Accountability becomes contingent on political connec¬ tions or on being in the right or wrong place rather than on stable cri¬ teria. The anxiety generated by a sense of uncertainty and lack of control over events creates a pressure towards team alliances. "Team playing" requires self-streamlining where one makes self into an object and tailors it to suit the circle or the occasion. This anxiety gives the perception that one's job is always on the line and engen¬ ders a need to protect oneself and, if possible, one's own. Such state of mind creates a vested interest, when things go wrong, to see to it that others are nailed, not self. Accordingly, when blame time comes, managers' immediate reaction is to CYA ("cover your ass"). When an internal decision reaches public opinion and poses a threat to business operations, it is turned down to public relations, where the moral issue is managed as a public relations task. Jackall ends his analysis with the following conclusion: A moral judgment based on a professional ethos has no meaning in a world where the etiquette of authority relationships, non-accountabil¬ ity for actions, and the necessity for protecting and covering for one's boss, one's network and oneself supersede all other considerations. As a matter of survival, not to mention advancement, corporate managers keep their eyes fixed on the social framework of their world and its requirements. Thus, they simply do not see most issues that confront them as moral concerns, even when problems might be posed by oth¬ ers in moral terms (p. 105).

Jackall explains the neutralization of individual and profession¬ al ethics in organizations in terms of bureaucratically structured conditions and relationships. Thus he argues that the anxiety and uncertainty experienced by employees working in profit-based cor¬ porations come to assume a pivotal position at the expense of other principles. Jackall did not distinguish between profit and non-profit organizations and appears to confine his analysis to business corpo¬ rations. However, a similar erosion of ethicality often takes place in stable non-profit organizations that do not subject employees to "survival" anxiety and inter-organization competitiveness, which calls into question the adequacy of an explanation which attributes the ethical decline solely to uncertainty and competitiveness.

52 Camouflaged Aggression

Jackall's analysis assumes that the loss of ethicality is caused, conditioned and maintained by the organizational structure. However, the position taken in this book is that structure only pro¬ vides a supportive context for the deterioration; it cannot fully cre¬ ate it. Its creation requires a force that catalyses and energizes the process of deterioration. I suggest that one such force is the evolu¬ tionary movement away from confrontation and toward camou¬ flage. This evolutionary and, at the same time, regressive movement owes its momentum not only to adaptations to organizational struc¬ tures, but also to the activation of corresponding phylogenetic states. Thus the suppression of confrontation within the organization has united (and catalyzed) biological, psychological and social forces that promote a social ethic of deception, subterfuge, insincerity and manipulation in the pursuit of organizational goals. Three types of regression appear to have developed: 1. Regression to egocentrism: The progress in moral reason¬ ing, according to Kohlberg (1969), involves the movement from an egocentric view of what is good to one that is more abstract and universal. The operationalization of the indi¬ vidual's principles in terms of organizational procedures and corporate objectives engenders forms of moral thinking that are concrete and curtailed in scope. The preoccupation with individual survival shifts the focus of moral concerns to what benefits immediate network, department or self at the expense of the welfare of clients and society. The norms of pragmatic flexibility further diffuse principled and categori¬ cal thinking. Both the concrete and the self-centred perspec¬ tives represent a regression to the early stages of moral development that Kohlberg has identified. 2. Regression from self as subject to self as object. The per¬ ception of self as fundamentally contingent on organization¬ al changes or on authority decisions limits the experience of the actual powers an incumbent has by virtue of his formal authority, by virtue of the symbolic moral powers of that authority and by virtue of the actual moral force he/she rep¬ resents as an "honorable" or "decent" or "law-abiding" citi¬ zen. The individual in this diminished psychological state experiences self as something that gets "nailed" like a piece of wood or one who gets on or off the "hook," as in the case of the chance-contingent and powerless fish. Experiencing self as an object also promotes the adoption of Darwinian

The Paradox of Modern Society 53

survivalist strategies, which tend to minimize and curtail the ethical ethos. The perception and experience of self as a sub¬ jective determining entity who is capable of holding and implementing value positions is necessary for the mainte¬ nance of ethical behavior. This regression to self as an object can be illustrated by the forms of self curtailment that employees in certain governmental bureau¬ cracies impose on themselves. These curtailments are actually selfimposed and are not stipulated by upper management. For example, employees in research or consultancy positions may define their duties as mere providers of information to the upper management upon the request of the latter, and may further seek to intimidate those who want to maintain their academic thinking approaches and their advising role. This curtailment of their duties to passive prag¬ matics is often neither a formal nor a functional organizational demand. Furthermore, this intellectual self-castration may constitute a violation of these incumbents' actual duties as providers of proac¬ tive advice and education to the administrative or the political body. 3. Regression at the level of security. This is an emotional state where the protective legal structures of the position and the moral and social strengths of the incumbent, inside and outside the organization, often afford no protection against experiencing an unrealistic and exaggerated fear of retaliation. In such an anxiety-ridden state of vulnerability, individuals may be afraid to express directly their views or take moral stands. This irrational and self constricting fear that strikes the bureaucrat is an intriguing phenomenon that is better explained by including the factor of phylogenetic regression. These regressions strip individuals of their sense of power and security and serve to further blend the individual with the foliage of structures and to use those very structures to attack through stealth. Consider the symbolism of some of the phrases in the vocabulary of bureaucracy, which refer to the state of camouflage and a concern about its removal. This preoccupation indicates that camouflage is an underlying psychological reality within the organization: "point¬ ing the finger at" (visual blowing of cover); "blowing the whistle" (auditory blowing of cover); "covering one's ass" (seeking cover after losing cover); "sticking one's neck out" (risking the loss of cover).

54 Camouflaged Aggression

The tendency to maintain a state of camouflage can also be inferred from the trend to shy away from pursuing personal accountability. Jackall (1987), for example, describes how senior managers go to great lengths to avoid or minimize the effectiveness of inquisitory efforts at identifying personal accountability, and use very creative butt-covering ploys to avoid being identified as perpe¬ trator. For example, a high ranking executive told Jackall: "The one statement that will paralyze a room is when someone in authority says: 'Now I'm not interested in a witch hunt, but../ When these words are uttered, the first reaction of people is immediately to hun¬ ker down and protect their flanks "(p.100). The reaction of many managers to novel and creative ideas is fear and anxiety about self-preservation. In many instances, their fear is unrealistic, but the maxim "better safe than sorry" has become the sine qua non in the management of public organizations. It seems reasonable to ask how can individuals who occupy apparent¬ ly secure and often eminent positions be so easily and irrationally intimidated by rather nebulous threats? What has happened to the status of office, to intellectual credibility, to the security of seniority and tenure, to pride of office and even to vanity and narcissism? Managers appear to have found it necessary to run into hiding, just as tiny birds hide and freeze when they see the shadow of a circling hawk. The problem is not only that they hide in fear and anxiety, but also that after the felt threat is gone, they feel obliged to re-establish their self-esteem. Many take actions which intimidate the individual who suggested the creative idea or someone who is more vulnera¬ ble. Their actions are just as likely to be covered by a veneer of polit¬ ically correct and organizationally supportive rhetoric, which takes the action beyond criticism. The feeling of power that was lost by the awareness that their reaction was impotent is replenished by chal¬ lenging the potency of others. Managers can bring themselves up by knocking others down (as long as they are not seen to be doing so).

The Consensus on Injustice: Another Stage of Ethical Decline The moral regression that takes place in organizations can be seen to affect ethical behavior in two general ways: a) the cultivation of moral callousness and b) the segmentation of the moral perspec¬ tive. In both cases the causes were shown to inhere in the previous¬ ly described processes of operationalization and competition, in

The Paradox of Modern Society 55

insecurity and in the self-constriction resulting from a regression to the state of camouflage. Moral callousness is seen as a lack of com¬ passion or the reluctance to "stick out one's neck" in support of col¬ leagues who get treated unjustly, despite the grave impact such demise can have on the individual's life. In the case of moral seg¬ mentation, the employee isolates the norms that pertain to the work environment from the values that govern his/her family and other social life. For example, a manager may, with hardly any moral scru¬ ples, partake in a decision that results in a devastating blow against the career and family of an employee, but will react with guilt and self-recrimination upon injuring a cat with his car or upon failing to show for a social date. The loss of moral stamina resulting from the above discussed decline can further deteriorate to reach a stage of conscious support of and collaboration with the unethical behavior. To illustrate, the excessive retaliatory reaction of a director against a subordinate or a client is a rather familiar occurrence. The excessive reaction may be due to a slighted vanity or to past interac¬ tion between the two or to personality idiosyncrasy. The influence of other interacting colleagues is usually in the direction of taming the excessive reaction and towards a fair resolution of the conflict. But the sobering and balancing influence of rational and ethical col¬ leagues is diminishing in many organizations and also resonating in the same unethical direction. These colleagues not only tolerate the unethical behavior, but further join forces to implement it. Regardless of the motive, whether for gaining privileges or for appeasing the director, this collective behavior represents an addi¬ tional qualitative step in the direction of moral decline and regres¬ sion. The compliance of rational and ethical men with unjust conduct can be seen as a far more serious transgression than the commission of the unjust act by an individual alone. The consensus-collaboration with injustice can imply at least two additional moral transgressions. There is a failure to live up to the social duty to instruct and call upon colleagues to heed the unethical conduct. There is also the fail¬ ure to bring into consciousness the full moral implications of such collective participation, and this presupposes loss of abstract social thinking and loss of courage. Thus we are increasingly witnessing cases where the prejudiced decision of a director develops into a conspiracy of implementing and covering up the unjust decision by a connected group within the organization. When such collective behavior takes place in public agencies, universities and other lead-

56 Camouflaged Aggression

ing institutions, then it is an indication of a serious deterioration in ethical behavior within organizations. This active compliance with injustice paves the way to further deterioration that takes the form of bribery and other corrupt practices.

Organizational Politics and Camouflaged Aggression The concern of this text is with the dynamics of one of the two modes of aggression, regardless of motivational or contextual fac¬ tors that may influence the perception or the definition of the behav¬ ior. Just as the need for money does not explain why people steal (they also work to obtain money), motives belonging to financial gain, advancement, status or retaliation do not explain why individ¬ uals resort to camouflaged aggression. Thus explaining the resort to camouflaged aggression requires more than motive; aggression needs the instruments, the organizational opportunity, particular pressures to aggress, as well as the lack of specific normative and structural controls. There is, however, one general motive that obsessively seeks to utilize every available tactic and tends to progress toward an over¬ whelming preoccupation. This motive is power, which needs to be addressed briefly in relation to camouflaged aggression. 'The acqui¬ sition of power is second only to money as a motivator for managers, executives, administrators and professionals in a variety of occupa¬ tions" (Sankar, 1994, p. 23). Power provides the leader with many practical and psychological rewards. Managers acquire their initial power base from the legitimate authority of their position. The quest for more power may keep expanding and tends to increase with new power gains. Successful managers are expected to have a greater need for power in order to perform effectively. But if this quest for power is not curtailed by the organization or by the personality of the individual or by both, it will lead to the erosion of other impor¬ tant qualities of effective management and to the dysfunctional resort to camouflaged aggression. Velasquez (1982) observed that managers use a variety of tactics to build their power base, including image building, associating with the influential, developing allies, employing trade-offs, con¬ trolling access to information, manipulating research data to sup¬ port their particular point of view, making strategic replacements, creating sponsor-protege relationships, neutralizing potential oppo¬ sition, stimulating competition among ambitious subordinates and

The Paradox of Modern Society 57

restricting communication about real intentions. Some principled managers might use some of these tactics in an open and direct way, but others who are less constrained by ethics use them surrepti¬ tiously with the intent of deceiving others for the consolidation of their power, regardless of the effect their behavior has on the organ¬ ization. Moreover, even the most principled managers, who achieve success through their use of some of these tactics, may over time come to use them habitually as they learn the benefits that come from camouflaging their purposes. Recent books that purport to teach tactics for organizational power can be quite seductive to many managers, particularly in set¬ tings evidencing global competition and corporate take-overs, and within cultural backgrounds promoting individualism and selfaggrandizement. Examples of such books are Machiavelli on Management: Playing and Winning the Corporate Power Game by Griffin (1991), which seeks to "offer a guide to the principles of manage¬ ment as filtered through Machiavellian thought," and Organizational Power Politics: Tactics in Organizational Leadership by Fairholm (1993), that offers 22 power tactics that a manager may use. The Machiavellian philosophy that underlies these approaches assumes that no good can be achieved without power, and that power cannot be achieved without manipulation and deceit, and that manipula¬ tion is therefore necessary for the achievement of good. Although Machiavellian power tactics can promote effective management, they engender two serious problems which the authors failed to address. First, the manager's successful pursuit of power games can become obsessive, addictive and self-serving; he progresses along the stages described below. Second, power games tend to be readily recognized, learned and reciprocated in kind and to the extent that everyone in the organization comes to act as The Prince. Stringent organizational controls against the indulgence in power games is necessary. The progression or deterioration of the manager in the adoption of camouflaged aggression as a tool for power acquisition seems to occur in four stages: 1. Benign stage: Using power tactics without intention to deceive or harm others 2. Manipulation stage: Active and conscious manipulation of the truth and deliberate deception

58 Camouflaged Aggression

3. Self-centering stage: Incorporation of and dependence on manipulation and decep¬ tion as the managerial strategy of choice 4. Autonomy stage: The manager realizes that organizational structures and goals and personnel can be manipulated to serve narcissistic goals and the manager becomes caught up in the game of deceiving others and making them suffer simply for the self-satisfaction and ego enhance¬ ment that his accomplishments provide. Camouflaged aggression is no longer simply a means to an end; it is an end in itself. Even one pathological manager who has reached Stage 4 can have an enormously destructive impact on an organization and its members. However, camouflaged aggression seems to have an infectious quality. When many managers and members come to function at Stage 4, the organization itself can be said to have reached Stage 4. At that stage it is pathological and will soon become dysfunctional. It got that way by its failure to prevent the rampant use of camouflaged tactics such as manipulation, bluffing, conning, gamesmanship and intimidation, and by failing to maintain and promote values which would make such activities unacceptable.

CHAPTER IV Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression

There are probably as many techniques of camouflaging aggres¬ sion as there are people who apply them. Their variety is almost as impressive as their impact. Most fall within the following categories:

1. Indecision Many bureaucrats display a chronic tendency towards decisionavoidance and ambivalence. This tendency, which may represent a level of psychological insecurity, may, at the same time, be employed as a technique of camouflaged aggression. Such individu¬ als often delay making any decision or taking any action until all the (often unnecessary) information has been obtained or until all the (often disinterested) others have been consulted; or until the deci¬ sion has been turned over to a committee. It is ironic that individu¬ als who have a secure position, seniority, credibility, education and experience often avoid taking a position on issues, or eagerly and readily comply with the wishes of higher authority and accommo¬ date their views even if though they do not agree with them. An exaggerated and almost paranoid fear appears to grip the will of many bureaucrats. Their trepidation may earn them our contempt, since they represent a model that negates our deep-seated aspira¬ tions towards open and direct expression of views and feelings. Their behavior is akin to the freezing behavior that is found in many animals and may represent a regression along the phylogenetic con¬ tinuum of camouflage. Many animals freeze behind camouflage in the presence of a potential attacker in order to minimize detection. A human form of freezing is indecision. In organizations, however, the self-protective strategy of freez¬ ing can also be joined by the second strategy of camouflage: the effi¬ cient delivery of aggression. Indecision can thus be employed as a technique for hiding and for hurting others through frustration and exasperation.

2. Rigidity Indecision can hurt. So can rigidity. Bureaucrats can readily express aggression by refusing to allow change. Change, of course.

59

60 Camouflaged Aggression

is anathema to many bureaucrats, not only because it involves risk but also because it implies that what the bureaucrat is currently doing is somehow flawed. Bureaucrats are threatened by creativity. It makes them uncomfortable. Many make a show of publicly encouraging creativity and applauding new ideas while they retali¬ ate against the creator of the ideas. Those who dare to suggest change are likely to feel the wrath of the bureaucrat, although they are unlikely to know that is why they are suffering. Bureaucrats are unlikely to express their resentment of new ideas by behavior which might make them appear rigid or stub¬ born or angry. They are much more likely to retaliate against those who are foolish enough to suggest change by taking actions and issuing directives which seem to be in the best interest of all but actually serve only to enable the bureaucrats to squelch the idea while appearing to promote it. Bureaucrats can easily make a simple idea complex; so complex that it requires careful study (referral to committee) or more infor¬ mation (referral to consultants) or careful costing (referral to accountants). As a last resort, it can be referred to lawyers. Each of these apparently sensible precautions can yield to the demise of an idea. They may not be precautions but merely ploys. They can be time-consuming and expensive and are likely to require extra work for other members of the organization who are likely to be less than pleased with the creator. Bureaucrats can also block change by making innocuous ideas appear controversial or risky. They may scuttle an idea by vigorous¬ ly and publicly fulfilling their organizational responsibility as they introduce "effective measures" which appear designed to ensure the implementation of the idea, but which actually prevent people from implementing it without unavoidably and obviously jeopardizing some other aspect of the organization's functioning.

3. Time Manipulation Time can hurt. Time is the best friend of individuals who wish you to suffer. They have two choices; they can rush you or delay you, and they can do both while appearing to act in your best inter¬ est.

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 61

Too little time Most of us recognize the tension that someone can make us feel with a glance at their watch while we are talking to them. It is a sim¬ ple, furtive gesture, but one which can ruin your concentration in a conversation or ruin your presentation at a meeting. Nothing need be said, no ill feelings need be expressed. In fact, the more surrepti¬ tious the glance, the more the speaker is hurt. A direct communica¬ tion from the listener that he has little time would be less discom¬ forting than a more furtive and fashionable glance at a watch. Most of us have had the experience of arriving at a meeting with bureaucrats who, apologizing profusely, inform us that they have to attend a meeting which they just learned about and thereby lower our self-esteem as we realize that we are less important in their eyes than the people they are about to meet with (whoever they are). As Ross (1999) has noted, meetings are more important than people.

Too much time A much more common technique is to take too much time. It is very easy to make you suffer by a delay which is "in your best inter¬ est" or in the service of "procedure" or "policy" or "doing it right." Formality can be a polite, even graceful, way to ensure you suf¬ fer by delay. Phrases such as "we'll just get the paperwork done first"; "I am sure he will wish to give it his personal attention"; "we really should check with..."; "it is being processed," are all familiar ways to keep you waiting and wondering. They also take your con¬ trol away. Even more grating are delays which you must endure because of "policy." "Policy" is most likely to be invoked when your attempt to complain makes the person who is delaying you resentful of your challenging them, their position or their authority. It is understood that you must not be aggressive towards the person who is delaying you; after all, they are only following policy and are not personally responsible for your distress (although they may give you the feel¬ ing that they are delighting in the opportunity to use their position and "policy" to make you suffer). Their egos are safely protected by "established procedure." They can use their position to inflict many wounds on you while making any retaliation against them person¬ ally appear inappropriate, unfair and socially unacceptable. You can, of course, question the policy or express your disdain for it and suggest that you or the bureaucrat should take action to

62 Camouflaged Aggression

have it changed. Such presumptuous behavior is likely to lead to your being pictured in the eyes of the bureaucrat, observing bystanders and eventually yourself as an imbecile for even thinking that policy can be challenged, let alone changed. Typically, the required delay is expressed with an explanation that the instigator's personal choices are limited. The clear implica¬ tion is that because their freedom of choice and power has been taken away by the organization, yours must be too. Bureaucrats reduce you to their level of impotence while they exercise the only power the organization has left them - the power to make you suf¬ fer. Modern bureaucrats are protected by organizational procedures which are "designed to protect you," but actually have you at their mercy. The suffering inflicted as a result of delay does not stem only from the ensuing frustration and blockage in need fulfilment. It is also augmented by a metapsychological source, in that an individ¬ ual's life span is finite. For example, the delay in the receipt of a due payment may block a planned and much-needed vacation. The suf¬ fering stems not only from the frustration of a desire, but also from an implicit awareness that there may not be many other convenient times for such a vacation: life does not go on forever. Thus delays ultimately chop at our finite duration (our life); they constitute, in the final analysis, attempts at slow killing. Delays can result from the operation of complex systems and from their mismanagement; they also can be precipitated by an unconscious intention of a bureaucrat who is more in tune with the "hand that kills tenderly" (Nietzsche's phrase) and who can relate only to a whimpering experience of destruction and death. The challenge in dealing with this form of camouflaged aggression is to distinguish between delay stemming from structural sources and delay stemming from human intention masked by the former.

4. Information Knowledge is power, but it is through the controlled dissemina¬ tion of information that power is exercised. The manipulative with¬ holding and distribution of information is the basis of much camou¬ flaged aggression:

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 63

Too much information The person who coined the phrase "sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you" never worked in an organization. Many careers have been ruined by gossips. Rumor mongers are often trivialized as individuals who enliven their lack¬ lustre personal lives by gossiping. Their gossiping is more likely to be an expression of hostility than of boredom. Many are individuals who would never dare to express something critical to anyone directly, but relish in criticizing individuals while positioned safely behind their backs. Such back-stabbing is an everyday occurrence in organizations which strive to present an image of polite interaction among their members. Where frontal attack is prohibited; watch your back. Simple gossip may be a rather obvious weapon of the aggressor. Much more devious and camouflaged are techniques involving innocent-appearing rumor dropping; "accidental" breach¬ es of confidential information; innuendo; question-raising ("do you really think she could do that?"); and feigned denial ("I don't believe she would do that."). Fabrication is much less likely to be used than is exaggeration of some true event. Destructive information dissemination need not be nasty. You can quickly and effectively be driven up the wall by someone who gives you more information than you could possibly want or com¬ prehend. In fact, one of the common forms of bureaucratic sabotage consists of subordinates deliberately providing or subjecting their supervisors to "information overload" in order to drive them into a state of confusion and self-doubt.

Too little information Just as destructive as disseminating information which can dam¬ age someone is withholding or delaying the release of information which could be helpful to someone. We can be subjected to agoniz¬ ing doubt and worry by apparently well-meaning individuals who withhold or delay giving us information because "we didn't want to hurt your feelings" or "we didn't know how to tell you" or "we delayed saying anything until we were really sure." Another form of indirect aggression involves softening the blow by giving you only that amount of information which is not likely to upset you or by euphemizing the information that is given to you so that you do not seek more. In both cases the information is withheld under the guise of helping you or easing your pain. The implication

64 Camouflaged Aggression is that your pain would have been magnified if you had been given all the information; the reality is that withholding the information was intended to avoid your anger. For example, the "exit interview" is a euphemistic phrase for a process which is supposed to ease the pain of your termination, but is really designed to allow your employer to treat you in such a way that you should feel guilty if you have any ill-feelings against the executive(s) in the organization who have exercised their executive responsibilities (to execute!). Exit interviews are designed to enable harmful acts to be perpetrated in such a way as to minimize the risk of retaliation (e.g., by lawsuit) by the person who has been injured.

The building of information It has become very difficult to terminate employment or other forms of membership in an organization. One has to "build up a file" over a period of months or years to "justify" the ultimate sanction. Whereas one can appreciate the justice of basing termination on such documentation, it takes little imagination to realize the enormously destructive power provided by the surveillance, monitoring and detailed recording of our behavior that such procedures involve. We now are fired in stages, which means that our suffering is prolonged as the pain of termination is extended over a long period of time. Such procedures may improve objectivity, but they also engender suspiciousness, fear, insecurity and animosity among employers and employees. Gone are the days when disgruntled employers or employees would confront each other about some incident at the time it happened. Now they hold their ill-feelings in check until annual assessment time, which may be months down the road. They behave politely and courteously, with expressed concern for one another's welfare, as they make careful notes on a file which, when the time comes, will be used to justify terminating the employee in an apparently objective manner, devoid of any display of personal animosity which might make the action appear vindictive. Camouflaged aggression is dispensed slowly and carefully.

The timing of information The choice of time in releasing information is a central factor in maximizing its harmful impact. It is not that the information has been released, but when it is released that determines the harm. For example, the delivery of "pink slips," those devastating layoff or ter¬ mination letters, is often timed to reach the victim late Friday after-

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 65 noon or at the beginning of a holiday. The news not only ruins his weekend or vacation, it also makes him suffer the torments of being deprived of avenues for immediate redress. Managers do not want to get you while you are hot.

5. Withdrawal The withdrawal of love is frequently used in families to express displeasure when a family member does something offensive. This process has its parallel in organizations, where it is not love which is withheld, but attention. Ignoring one's colleagues can be just as hurtful as yelling at them and is much more difficult to cope with. If your colleague sharply rebukes you, it may hurt, but at least you know they are angry with you and probably why. However, ignor¬ ing you may mean that things about you are displeasing and you are left to conjecture: "what things?" People can lower your self-esteem more effectively by ignoring you than by rebuking you. A rebuke gives you information about what it is about you or your behavior that has engendered the neg¬ ative response; you know what you have to alter or fight. When you are ignored you may not know why and must guess at the reason, which means you must consider many more aspects of your behav¬ ior than would be necessary if you had been rebuked. Consequently, ignoring you can be more injurious to your self-esteem because it makes you question and perhaps feel guilty about many aspects of your behavior. In organizations, the withdrawal of attention is frequently done not directly (e.g., I am angry and don't want to speak to you), but indirectly (e.g., I am sorry I am not available to answer the phone at the moment). The answering machine may beep you, but no person will. A strategy often deployed for control and manipulation by means of withdrawal takes place when a new employee receives affection, concern and support, only to be greeted by coolness and rejection soon after settling into the new position. This practice can be used both by co-workers and supervisors. The result is anxiety, distress and diminished confidence: a state of psychological vulner¬ ability to manipulation and compliance. Much more destructive than temporary withdrawal of attention or support is intermittent withdrawal, which leaves you wondering not only why you are being rejected but when you will be rejected

66 Camouflaged Aggression again. The manager who alternates between bursts of affectionate recognition and unexpected withdrawal creates a generalized state of apprehension and psychological vulnerability. Such practices can be so well entrenched within the corporate culture that they may be expressed spontaneously and unconsciously.

6. Inaccessibility Any administrator, regardless of rank, can make access to him/her a very difficult, frustrating and time-consuming exercise. A vast and expanding array of measures, techniques and devices are available in any organization that can "legitimately" keep us in abeyance and anxiety. They include the sweet-talking secretary, who assures you that the boss is in a meeting (which he/she just invent¬ ed), and the now ever-present voice mail, which allows us to talk only to an inanimate object. All can be used to erect a temporal and spatial barrier that can be used selectively against us. The elusive administrator may not only be avoiding confrontation with a prob¬ lem we might present; he/she may also be expressing camouflaged aggression. Blocking our efforts to resolve a pressing issue not only increases our frustration and aggression but, at the same time, pre¬ vents us from expressing our aggression against its source. Deprived of a target, we are likely to direct our anger elsewhere or turn it inward, against ourselves. Either way, the administrator can sit back comfortably and enjoy the fruits of his efforts to distress us without having to face us. Consider the negative social implications of a relatively new invention, the answering machine or "voice mail." To be able to find out who has called you while you were out of the office is a signifi¬ cant and a low cost service. However, relying on the voice mail in the operations of daily client-serving offices of public or large cor¬ porations can have serious detrimental effects. This device can read¬ ily be used to provide employees with inaccessibility. The personal voice mail of the employee presents to the client an instant temporal block that is both frustrating and demoralizing, particularly when the message states that the incumbent is in his/her office but away from his/her desk. This machine maximizes the rewards of inacces¬ sibility in favor of the organizational employee. The employee can sit back and judge (often on the basis of a limited or fragmented mes¬ sage) when, or whether, to answer back, knowing that any decision he makes can be legitimated by justifications the client has no means

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 67

of verifying, such as being "extremely busy," "budget cuts" and "hectic meetings." Thus, this "inaccessibility device" tends to flatter the narcissism of the incumbent, allowing him/her to impose and enjoy his/her inaccessibility. At the other end, the client experiences not only delay and frustration, but a diminution in his status as he is put at the mercy of the employee. An implicit message is communicated to the client that office meetings are far more important than him or his concerns. Furthermore, this device structures its own brand of trick¬ ery. For example, the employee can switch on the recorded reply as soon as she sees the name of a certain caller on the display screen, or a client can be brushed off (kept further in the state of inaccessibili¬ ty) by offering to transfer his call to another employee, who turns out to be a voice mail. I have heard reports from some developing countries that inaccessibility games are running rampant. The abili¬ ty to make oneself inaccessible is becoming a major expression of status and power. Observe how this technology "structures" inaccessibility. The use of the device gradually routinizes, legitimizes and allows recon¬ ciliation with the assumption of its indispensability and with the actual abuse it makes possible. As lower and junior managers become inaccessible by telephone, clients resort to receptions and private parties so that they can directly or personally meet with these managers. Thus, one more trend can be added to those affect¬ ing modern organizations, namely, the "flattening" of lobbying. I believe that voice mail has been the most sinister catalyzer of inaccessibility and non-confrontation between public organizations and their clients. This device can furthermore be used as a status symbol to provide the junior employee with narcissistic rewards, often to compensate for inadequate monetary rewards. When such a device is tied to the narcissism of status, it is bound to be used for destructive purposes. A strict regulation and control of the use of this service is necessary for maintaining a relationship of respect and trust between the public and large organizations. Some corporations have disallowed the use of this aid while the employee is on duty.

7. Non-Interference One of the more subtle ways of delivering aggression occurs when supervisors or co-workers choose not to interfere to correct or to warn another employee who is making a mistake or who is unwit-

68 Camouflaged Aggression

tingly indulging in a behavior that is likely to get him/her into trou¬ ble. They may justify their inaction to themselves and others by voic¬ ing their concern that interference would involve a violation of val¬ ues, such as respect for privacy and individual freedom of choice. Non-interference is often a way of venting aggression, which allows the aggressor to sit back and enjoy watching individuals harm them¬ selves.

8. Entrapment Entrapment in the animal world involves the aggressor acting in some beguiling way which leads its prey into suspending its selfprotective behavior, or by leading it to enter a place where it can be devoured no matter how much it may resist. The Venus flytrap, for example, displays a fake flower to attract insects, whereupon it traps them for a meal. Entrapment is also common in the organizational environment, where it usually involves luring one's victim by warmth and understanding into making mistakes. For example, they can be seduced into expressing genuine feelings or revealing information which can be used against them in other situations. Entrapment relies on the skills of masking genuine feelings and intentions, and on the skills of false representation. I had one experience with entrapment which I cannot resist nar¬ rating, and one in which I was the victim. I had submitted a brief proposal for a training program to a director in a public agency who, as I found out later, was personally developing a similar program. During our meeting with another member of his department pres¬ ent, he proceeded to discuss the practical administrative implica¬ tions of my program, assuming it was accepted. This assumption was skilfully made, in the course of the discussion, to evolve into a tacit acceptance of my program, which encouraged me to hand the director large parts of its contents. The director was able to put his hands on the material by entrapping me with deferential flattery and by the communication of a false impression of hiring.

9. Undermining the Sense of Security An extensive variety of strategies are deployed for the purpose of undermining the sense of security of an employee. An example would be the dissemination of indirect, incomplete or negative information regarding impending cuts or termination or the work performance of an employee. The resulting anxiety and distress not only handicaps the performance of the victim, but also renders

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 69 him/her psychologically vulnerable to manipulation and exploita¬ tion. Large populations of employees can be made to comply with adverse policies and conditions through the anxiety provoked by the threat of "budget cuts," "departmental trimmings," "lay-offs," "downsizing" and the like. One of the main dangers of this type of existential anxiety is that it undermines employee morale and cre¬ ative initiative, as these are contingent upon a cultivated sense of security and acceptance by the corporate body. Crafty bureaucrats and managers who employ these tactics are aware that there is a limit. Excessive insecurity may too easily be perceived as a threat and can lead to open hostility. Moreover, intermittent employment of this anxiety can further enhance its power in generating compli¬ ance and subornation. Tacit threats need to be followed after a cer¬ tain time by certain optimistic notes, such as the suspension of the threat or some future hopes. Regardless of functional benefits to the organization, such as compliance, these security undermining tactics can exert a heavy toll in terms of increased resentment towards the organization, apathy, deteriorating interpersonal relations and low¬ ered productivity.

The Bureaucratic Vendetta The tendency to retaliate or reciprocate aggression in a camou¬ flaged manner does not appear to be diminished by the passage of time and even at the level of small and petty grievances. Grudges for slights are not forgotten; they seem to be held in a state of suspend¬ ed animation until an organizational opportunity arises for retalia¬ tion. Furthermore, the continuous, cordial and often direct work interaction of the protagonists does not appear to eliminate the need for "getting even." This affective and memory perseverance for minor revenge is not consistent with confrontational retaliation, where the direct catharsis and the conflict resolution that ensue often reduce the need to retaliate. Also, in the latter case, continuous interaction serves to neutralize any lingering grudges. But there may be more to bureaucratic vendetta than the blocking of direct cathar¬ sis. It was suggested in chapters two and three that the confronta¬ tional and non-confrontational modes are qualitatively different and that the confrontational mode is higher from an evolutionary per¬ spective and healthier for social and individual well-being.

70 Camouflaged Aggression Choosing to deliver aggression in a non-confrontational, rather than a confrontational mode, involves a crucial point of conversion at the psychological level. This point of conversion is a shift from a forth¬ right and direct approach to one of deception and camouflage. The most important differences between these two strategies lie in the affective and temporal dimensions. Thus, an individual opting to aggress through the non-confrontational mode will have to suppress or repress the affective components, namely anger, hostility and opposition, and replace them with a retrograde and masked vindic¬ tiveness that publicly announces that "there is no problem." The shift from an attack strategy to that of camouflage also implies opt¬ ing for a protracted, time-oriented expression of aggression, usually involving surveillance and waiting for the right opportunity. The correspondence of this choice to phylogenetically rooted strategies is clear: most of what the camouflaged animal does is wait quietly and calmly for the right opportunity to strike. A preying cat may lie for hours in wait in front of a mouse-hole. Thus, the regressed phyloge¬ netic-psychological state combines with the organizational structure to make bureaucratic revenge a waiting and timing game.

The Hydraulic Principle Ethologist Konrad Lorenz (1966) postulated that human aggres¬ sion springs primarily from an innate fighting instinct that is neces¬ sary for species survival. He believed that aggression is not neces¬ sarily the result of a reaction to external stimuli, but is spontaneous¬ ly generated. He believed that energy specific to aggression accu¬ mulates continuously in the neural centres and that the accumulat¬ ed energy seeks discharge regardless of the presence of a triggering stimulus. Although animals and humans both tend to respond to specific "releasers" of aggressive energy, humans do not just pas¬ sively await the proper releasers, they spontaneously search for them or invent them. "It is the spontaneity of the instinct that makes it so dangerous" (Lorenz, 1966). Freud (1920) also argued that aggression, defined as physical and psychological destructiveness expressed against others and against self, is not merely a reaction to external stimuli nor restrict¬ ed to ego preservation, but also is a constantly flowing impulse root¬ ed in the constitution of the human organism. He suggested in his final conceptualization that aggression is inescapable. His concep¬ tion suggests that concern should be focused not on the elimination

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 71

of aggression (for that is impossible), but on its deflection, manage¬ ment and sublimation. Conceptions of aggression such as those of Freud and Lorenz have been referred to as "Flydraulic Models" of aggression. The analogy is to the pressure exercised by dammed-up water or steam in a closed container. The hydraulic model of aggression has two assumptions: a) Aggression is generated from internal sources and from external stimuli and tends to accumulate until it is dis¬ charged. b) The accumulated aggression, as in the case of dammed water, is expressed at the point of least resistance or the weakest or least defended point. There is no intention at this point to argue about the first assumption; it has been debated for generations. The interest here is in the second assumption, since it pertains to the dynamics of the expression of aggression. When the hydraulic expression of aggres¬ sion is subsequently used, it will be referring to the tendency for aggression to be expressed in accordance with the principle of least resistance. Ethologists (e.g., Lorenz, 1966; Goodall, 1990) have conducted numerous observations and experiments among birds and animals that demonstrate how aggression can be redirected to the closest, most convenient or "safest" target. Among the chimpanzees, for example, if an animal is attacked by one of higher rank, it often does not dare fight back, but vents its aggression on one of lower rank. During the mating season, the female goose is allowed to invade the territory of the male; the gander deals with the triggered aggression by redirecting it through threatening other close birds or by attack¬ ing an inanimate object such as a stone. Although among humans social conventions have conditioned the expression of aggression, the displacement of aggression has been well documented in clinical and experimental research (e.g., Feshbach & Singer, 1957; Berkowitz, Cochran & Embree, 1981). In many circumstances, human aggres¬ sion can elude social structuring and follow a hydraulically dis¬ placed route, in which it is released at targets that present points of least resistance. The result, as shall be indicated, often produces dehumanization and social regression.

72 Camouflaged Aggression

The Hydraulics of Aggression The expression of aggression following the hydraulic model is a common occurrence in organizations. In many instances and con¬ trary to basic norms of fairness, aggression may follow the course of least resistance. For example, the apparent target of a manager's rep¬ rimand is often the meek employee who is unlikely to protest and challenge the manager during the meeting. A manager angered by a serious transgression by some of his/her employees may resort to venting his aggression during a general meeting and by directing his criticism at the group as a whole to avoid direct confrontation with the specific employees who were at fault. Similarly, during prison riots that are often characterized by unrestrained aggression, pris¬ oners who get beaten up as "informants" often belong to the ranks of the weak or undefended inmates. Masri (1984) analyzed cases of innocent civilians killed during civil war in acts of retaliation and revenge. The victims were appar¬ ently killed on the basis of their nominally belonging to an adver¬ sarial religious sect or political party. However, closer analysis revealed that their affiliation was a sufficient reason for their assas¬ sination only when they presented a target of zero resistance to the heavily-armed and charged fighters. The victims found themselves unarmed and helpless among armed individuals in a state of vin¬ dictive rage. Those enraged fighters seeking revenge for the killing of relatives ignored the culpable, but armed militia members close by and chose to vent their murderous aggression on the unarmed civilians. The civilian victims were convenient targets who promised no resistance and no deterrence. The principle of least resistance has been recognized if not artic¬ ulated as long as five hundred years ago, when Machiavelli warned his prince not to travel among his people without an armed escort. He apparently believed that no matter how meagre the actual force possessed by the visiting prince was, it was enough to remove him from the extremely vulnerable state of representing a point of zero resistance in the face of potential violence. Machiavelli may have been aware that the presence of small crude force can at times be a better harness to dammed aggression than any appeal to fairness or reason. The hydraulic relationship can also be observed in folk wisdom. There is an old homily: "the one who intervenes to separate two individuals engaged in a fight will receive two-thirds of the blows."

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 73

From the perspective of the hydraulic model, the two fighting par¬ ties are fully charged and actively aggressive, while the peacemaker is less charged and less belligerent; the peacemaker represents a weaker point than either of the two combatants. As a result, blows land spontaneously on him. Experienced "fight-stoppers," such as police officers, seem to be aware of this relationship and often begin their intervention with an authoritarian burst of physical and verbal force. This initial action may not only distract the combatants, but may also communicate to them that the intervener is not a safe (low resistant) target.

The Hydraulics of Camouflaged Aggression The hydraulic model suggests that aggression continually seeks discharge. It also suggests that when discharge in the direction of the original source of the aggression is blocked, it is likely to be redi¬ rected to some safer target. Aggression expressed through organiza¬ tional structures also follows a hydraulic model. The hydraulic expression of aggression is maximized at both extreme ends of high affect (unchallenged rage) and low tempo (camouflaged expres¬ sion). This paradox can be explained by the fact that in both of these two conditions there is an absence or a weakened confrontational retaliatory force. Another reason is the weakening of the operations of moral norms. In the case of extreme rage, ethical consciousness is displaced by strong affect; in the case of camouflaged aggression, ethical consciousness is weakened by masking (no external audi¬ ence) and by the fragmentation of the perception of the aggressive behavior. The blockage of direct aggression can be the result of a lack of opportunity or of the aggressor's judgement that the possible conse¬ quences of such an expression would make it unwise. The rules and conventions of organizations make such blockage commonplace. Accordingly, one would expect that aggression would be redirected toward safer targets in accordance with the hydraulic principle of aggression expression. Thus we should not be surprised to observe such phenomena as "back-stabbing" directed at an absent employee by his/her co-workers during a meeting. The fact of his/her absence creates a point of low resistance or deterrence, which both motivates and gives latitude to the expression of aggression. Similarly, many journal articles and books being considered for publication get sub¬ jected to unfair and vicious evaluations by reviewers. Such destruc-

74 Camouflaged Aggression

tive critiques are generated by the state of anonymity often given to reviewers. Favorite targets are employees who are part-time, on contract or on a probationary period. Such individuals are vulnerable because they tend to have less recourse for hitting back and have more to lose in doing so compared to permanent, unionized and established employees. Their state of low resistance within the organization tends to attract spontaneous "free floating" aggression and may lead some individuals to victimize them. If the victim were to directly pose the question, "Why are you making me suffer?" the perpetrator, if he/she were to answer truth¬ fully, would say "because I can." The hydraulic expression of aggression, in organizations as in other settings, tends to be directed at the most vulnerable, but in organizations vulnerability is a function not only of the perceived weakness of the person but also of the perceived weakness of the position the person occupies. In effect, individuals tend to be vic¬ timized because they are situationally vulnerable. The implication of this phenomenon is very significant; it involves a level of dehuman¬ ization of aggression which is essentially regressive. The selection of victims is determined not by their personal contribution to the actions which stimulated the aggressive feelings, nor even by their personal attributes. It is determined by the attributes of the situation. The vulnerable position not only attracts free-floating aggression via displacement, it also can gradually elicit latent aggression. For example, a vulnerably positioned employee may gradually draw out jealousy, status rivalry and need for ego aggrandizement from col¬ leagues and subordinates. Conversely, an incumbent with a fortified position (e.g., clear job description, tenure, unionization, recourse to legal bodies) would force his co-workers to suppress or to sublimate those aggressive feelings. Victimology is the branch of criminology that examines not only the effect of crime on victims, but also the contribution of the victim to crime. It may be necessary to talk about victimology of positions. The weak or vulnerable position can contribute to antisocial aggres¬ sive behavior in at least four major ways: 1) it attracts hydraulically free-floating aggression; 2) it cultivates and elicits aggressive expres¬ sions among interacting others; 3) it fails to provide sufficient deter¬ rence; and 4) runs the risk of causing the incumbent to lash out with excessive aggression after repeated assaults on his/her status or dig¬ nity.

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 75

Regressive Aggression The expression of aggression by means of camouflage in social settings represents a regression towards more primitive states where camouflage was the rule. The extensive reliance on camouflaged aggression reverses the evolutionary biological and social trend towards confrontation. Social development enabled aggressive impulses to be expressed more openly, directly and normatively against appropriate and discernable targets instead of being masked or random. However, the growth of the formal organization led to a reversal of this fundamental social trend. The expression of aggres¬ sion in the organization also undergoes another form of regression and dehumanization as a result of hydraulic displacement. This process removes any element of principle or justice from the equa¬ tion; the expression of aggression becomes reduced to crude energy discharge. The socially meaningful and potentially valuable expression of aggression is lost when it is reducible to mere emotional or physical release. Cognitive, social, moral and political considerations and goals must be integral parts of the expression of aggression in social behavior. When these a priori structures are no longer relevant to aspects of aggression, the behavior is regressed and dehumanized. As will be discussed in chapter six, the rapid increases in random killing by mass murderers reflects this phenomenon. Such crimes symbolize the movement toward the indiscriminate expression of aggression. In random murdering, such as mass murder or "driveby shootings," the aggressive drive is independent of purposeful social action. Thus, "aggression which can be socially meaningful and instrumental behavior becomes an alien and purposeless ten¬ sion that needs to be reduced like tension in a full bladder" (Abdennur, 1987, p. 122). Hydraulically expressed aggression within an organization is de-symbolized, ego-alien, asocial, dehumanized and accordingly a regressed form of drive release. This regressed form of aggression can be termed malignant, as it possesses similar characteristics to those of malignancies in biological functions. The most distinguish¬ ing feature of a malignant cell is that it is dissociated and behaves independently of its original role in the larger biological context. The cancer cell, for example, unlike healthy cells, behaves in a fashion which is totally self-serving and independent of the constraints of the other cells. Malignant aggression in organizations is also selfserving and is expressed independently of the organization's social

76 Camouflaged Aggression

and political purposes; its expression is situationally determined and its purpose is individual tension release. Thus it becomes possi¬ ble to give a clear definition to the term "malignant" aggression, often employed metaphorically in the context of brutality. Malignant aggression is aggressive behavior that is expressed independ¬ ently of its normative, social and political contexts, and is precipitated sole¬ ly as a result of a convenient situation and the need for tension release.

Self-Destructiveness in Organizations The blockage of the free flow of aggression also leads to the dis¬ placement of aggression onto another safe target - the self. Organizations provide an abundance of avenues for the insidi¬ ous delivery of non-confrontational aggression in many masked and devious forms. One of the available avenues where masking and deception occurs is self-destructiveness in which aggression targets the self. Self-destructiveness is expressed against self not only in terms of obviously "masochistic," physically-injurious behaviors such as flagellation or self-mutilation. Aggression against self is more likely to be delivered non-confrontationally, that is, without the victims realizing they are making themselves suffer or realizing that their suffering is attributable to aggression (see Karl Menninger's Man against Himself, first published in 1938). Selfdirected aggression can take many forms, such as industrial "acci¬ dents" and "unintentional" errors in behavior (or judgement). Many executives have found themselves in jeopardy, having behaved in ways which would not have been expected of them given their abil¬ ities and experience. It is suggested that many of these cases are symptomatic of self-directed aggression finding expression through devious pathways. Organizations expand tremendously the number of opportuni¬ ties for the delivery of aggression against self. Self-destructiveness may, for example, make use of the simple act of forgetting: in order to deliver a sabotaging blow to oneself, one may forget a deadline, a time of sale, an appointment with an employer, a policy directive, a safety measure... In situations where organizational structures pre¬ clude delivery of even non-confrontational aggression against oth¬ ers, self-destructiveness can be expected to escalate and become the aggression of choice. Self-directed aggression conforms to the hydraulic model since the self is a relatively safe target and promises little retaliation. Self-

Patterns of Camouflaged Aggression 17

directed aggression is also usually masked; it provides a vehicle for the expression of aggression which requires no acknowledgment of aggression since the aggressor is the victim. Self-deception acting in defense of self-image further augments the masking and camouflage of such aggression. In his book. Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud (1930) argued that civilization imposes restrictions on the gratification of the sexu¬ al and the aggressive instincts, and the more culture evolves, the more sacrifices are demanded of instincts, and the more difficult sublimation becomes. He also predicted that cultural evolution will be accompanied by further intensification of the sense of guilt. Freud made no explicit reference to the dynamic role played by the increase in the structural complexity of formal organizations. I suggest two additional sources of discontent with civilization. The first is an increase in interpersonal aggression and victimization, and the second is an increase in self-directed aggression. Both result from the expanding avenues for the delivery of aggression provided by organizations. Thus, the organizational individual (that is, all of us) is likely to be increasingly victimized by aggression delivered by others and by self. It appears that contemporary individuals are hav¬ ing more problems with aggression management than with sexual repression. It is the suppression, the denial, the masking, the disor¬ ganization and the organizational spread of aggression that is likely the main cause of discontent.

CHAPTER V Camouflaged Aggression and Personality

Anybody is capable of engaging in camouflaged aggression in a supportive environment, particularly one in which such behavior is normative. However, it is not possible to fully understand any set¬ ting which involves prolonged interaction among individuals with¬ out consideration of the personalities of those individuals who com¬ prise its social milieu. Whether and how an individual expresses aggression in any situation depends on the environment, and also is determined by the interaction between that environment and the individual's personality - the relatively enduring characteristics of the individual. Structural sociology theory (e.g., Marxist sociology; social strain theory of Merton, 1968) has promoted a conception of human nature that grossly under-emphasizes the role of individual personality fac¬ tors. This perspective also ignores intent, reducing it to a mere pos¬ sibility within an overwhelmingly conditioning social setting. Such emphasis on structure at the expense of process was referred to by Wrong (1961) as the "over-socialized" conception of human beings. This conception denies that human beings are intentional actors who bring with them specific biographies, perspectives and dispositions which lead them to act in different ways within the same social con¬ text. An adequate model of human interaction in organizations must synthesize environmental and personality factors and adopt a psy¬ chosocial perspective. How people function in any social setting is a function of the interaction of personality and circumstance. A psychosocial perspective is also essential to understanding how aggression is expressed (or suppressed) in organizations. In the case of camouflaged aggression, the interaction between organiza¬ tional structures and personality, particularly disordered personali¬ ty, is expected to be influenced by two main processes: a) Quantity to quality conversion: Erich Fromm (1955) argued that the character and functioning of organizations can be strongly influenced by the preponderance of certain personality types within them. Such a phenomenon is propagated by a process of recruitment whereby incumbents seek to hire individuals who resemble them in

79

80 Camouflaged Aggression personality style. As a result, an increase in the number of individu¬ als possessing a certain personality trait or orientation yields an alteration in the nature of the organization; quantity converts to quality. For example, having more than one manager with a para¬ noid personality orientation characterized by suspiciousness may lead to the development of excessive surveillance in management practices and excessive supervision and control, which can reduce personal creativity within the organization and stimulate resent¬ ment and hostility, which in turn can create more suspiciousness. b) psycho-structural marriage: As we shall see, there are a num¬ ber of relatively distinct types of individuals whose personality characteristics make them prone to interact with others and with their position in particular ways. There is always the possibility of an adaptive match between the characteristics of personality and those of the position assumed. An example of this match is the high compatibility and adaptability of a passive-aggressive style to com¬ plex hierarchical structures. This compatibility enhances the motiva¬ tion of such incumbent to aggress and to avail himself of all oppor¬ tunities for that purpose. As a result, camouflaged aggression is like¬ ly to resonate and thrive around such incumbents. The organization may well flounder under the force of myriad rules and procedures which appear benign, but owe their development to the aggressive needs of disordered personalities well placed. An onlooker might attribute the resultant deterioration of the organization to its exces¬ sive bureaucratization, whereas the real source of the problem is not in bureaucratic structures per se, but in the psycho-structural "mar¬ riage" between the organization's practices and the personality of its members. The view that humans are abstract generalized socio-cultural entities is rejected from the perspective of this text in favor of an interactive one, which stresses that the socialization of people into a social system is never entirely successful and that no social system is immune to the aberrations of personality.

Camouflaged Aggression and Personality Disorder Personality factors can influence camouflaged aggression in at least three possible ways: 1. there are particular types of personalities who are most like¬ ly to engage in camouflaged aggression;

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 81

2. there are particular types of personalities who are likely to stimulate camouflaged aggression in others; 3. there are particular types of personalities who are likely to resonate camouflaged aggression when they are victimized by it. The category of personality disorders is a broad one. It subsumes behavior problems that differ greatly in form and severity. At one end of the spectrum are individuals whose extreme unethical or criminal behavior makes them unable to function in a normal set¬ ting; many are incarcerated in prisons or prison psychiatric hospi¬ tals. At the other extreme are individuals who generally function adequately and may be highly successful in their careers, but have deeply imbedded and long standing antisocial personality traits that make them troublesome or difficult to get along with, and cause problems for themselves and others in social or occupational situa¬ tions. There are several types of personality disorder which can be classified according to their most prominent behavioral characteris¬ tic, but they all evidence a history of persisting interpersonal behav¬ iors which lead to fractured relationships and cause considerable suffering to those with whom they come in contact. An organization whose membership includes individuals with any of the personality disorders that are described in this chapter can be crippled by the impact such individuals can have on the way aggression is expressed within that organization. Such individuals may achieve positions of considerable influence in organizations in spite of their personality disorders or possibly because of them. The influence of even one such individual can be staggering. In order to identify the organizational features of personality disorders, it may be useful to distinguish them from other psychopathological disorders with which they are often confused. There are three broad categories of abnormal behavior. a) psychosis : disorders characterized by a severe rift with real¬ ity associated with delusions, hallucinations or extreme changes in mood. These are schizophrenia, psychotic para¬ noia and the affective disorders (including manic-depressive illness and psychotic depression). b) psychoneuroses : disorders in which there is no loss of con¬ tact with reality, but the individual's efficiency may be impaired by anxiety, guilt, depression or fear. Symptoms

82 Camouflaged Aggression may include behaviors such as phobia, hypochondria, obsessive-compulsiveness, psychogenic pain, panic attacks, exces¬ sive tension, inhibition, conflict or ambivalence. c) personality disorders: tend to express, to a certain extent, the converse of psychoneuroses. Reduced rather than exces¬ sive anxiety predominates and conflicts are acted out on oth¬ ers rather than against self. These disorders are essentially interpersonal ones; they are also more resistant to change and modification than neuroses. Since the turn of the century, the clinical and research interest in psychoses and psychoneuroses has been extensive. Much less med¬ ical and academic research and theorizing has occurred in the case of the personality disorders. Research attention on personality dis¬ orders has been surprisingly late in blooming. For example, serious research in psychopathy started in the 70s, almost 30 years after the publication of Harvey Cleckley's Mask of Sanity in 1941, which pro¬ vided a comprehensive clinical profile of the psychopath. This dis¬ parity in the volume of research could be explained by the fact that psychotics are more accessible to professionals because the often debilitative effect of these conditions requires long term psychiatric supervision. In the case of neuroses, individuals themselves often seek professional help in order to alleviate distressing symptoms. In personality disorders, such conditions seldom apply. Individuals with personality disorders do not suffer from manifest impairments of their rational faculties or their ability for social functioning. They also seldom experience personal distress or a need for symptom alle¬ viation or self-improvement. Accordingly, such individuals are less likely to come under the scrutiny of professionals. Psychotic or psychoneurotic individuals can create many prob¬ lems in organizations, but organizations are particularly vulnerable to the interpersonal and socially destructive behavior of individuals with personality disorders. They will be the focus of this chapter.

Personality Disorders The essential feature of a personality disorder is an enduring pattern of behavior that is maladaptive for the individual, but even more damaging to others. Although there may be no manifestation of the symptoms, such as distorted perception of reality or excessive anxiety, tension or fears, the individual evidences persistent prob¬ lems in interpersonal and occupational functioning. In fact, in con-

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 83 trast to the neurotic personality, individuals with personality disor¬ ders evidence a relative absence of anxiety, tension, fear or guilt and seem to be little constrained by conscience. Their lack of conscience enables them to act out their frustrations and conflicts on others with minimal restraint and without guilt. The individual with a personal¬ ity disorder is self-centred, projects fault and blame for the problems they create on to others, and seldom evidence self-criticism or a need for change. They usually possess an exceptional ability for deception and for masking their ego-centred motives. Because of their egocentricity and the fluidity of their conscience, the interpersonal behav¬ ior of the individual with a personality disorder is little influenced by the internal controls of personal responsibility. External controls are required to prevent their interpersonally damaging behavior. Such individuals are more likely to respond to direct material or psychological gains or to direct threats of retaliation than to an inner sense of social/moral responsibility. The impact of neurotic disorders on the quality of interpersonal interaction tend to be far less negative than the impact of personali¬ ty disorders. In the case of the neurotics, with some exceptions, they tend to do more damage to themselves and their closest associates than to others. In organizations, they are most likely to evidence per¬ sonal distress and inefficiency or limited productivity. They may evidence frequent minor illnesses, perfectionism and workaholism, absenteeism, and personal vulnerabilities to interpersonal conflicts. The social and organizational damage that can be created by indi¬ viduals with personality disorders can be much more drastic. They can undermine the entire social fabric of stable, reciprocal and socially responsible relationships and the efficient functioning of the organization. The clinical profiles of these disorders presented below are based on the third revised edition (DSM III-R, 1987) and the fourth edition (DSM IV, 1994) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, which presents ten personali¬ ty disorders. The following descriptions of the profiles also refer to other literature and to my observations and inferences regarding the contribution of personality disorders to camouflaged aggression in organizations.

84 Camouflaged Aggression

Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder Individuals with this disorder typically express hostility in indi¬ rect and non-confrontational ways, which leaves others feeling dis¬ tressed, frustrated or aggravated by the individuals' reluctance to explicitly identify the problem. These individuals can make their associates suffer through such apparently non-aggressive yet exas¬ perating behaviors as pouting, procrastination, stubbornness, ineffi¬ ciency, annoying politeness, being too "understanding," excessively apologetic or overly helpful in ways which turn out to have effects opposite to those which the individual apparently intended. Also common to this disorder is careful planning (or plotting) in which, while appearing to be doing their duty or trying to help people or the organization itself, they embarrass others by disseminating harmful information, make themselves unavailable when most needed, and create enmity among friends and discord among coop¬ erating groups. Frequent targets of their passive-aggression are indi¬ viduals who have some power over them, such as their spouses or their bosses, whom they cannot or will not confront. Within the organization, this personality disorder can be much more destructive than in their home or among their circle of friends, where their behavior can more easily be recognized. The structures in organizations provide innumerable opportunities for non-con¬ frontational delivery and the masking of aggression behind a cloak of respectability. They are always on the lookout for personal vul¬ nerabilities of co-workers and for situations where members of the organization are compromised, so they can embarrass or blackmail them. Because their victims often do not know that the aggressor has intended to harm them, they have no clear target against whom they can justifiably express retaliatory aggression. As a result, individu¬ als with this disorder tend to contribute significantly to the aug¬ mentation of the quantum of aggression within the organization through their tendency to both initiate and prolong camouflaged aggression.

Paranoid Personality Disorder The essential feature of this disorder is a tendency to misinter¬ pret the actions of people as deliberately demeaning or threatening. They evidence a generalized suspicion and expectation of being exploited, plotted against or harmed by others in some way. Frequently a person with this disorder will question, without justifi-

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 85

cation, the loyalty or trustworthiness of friends or associates. They may be reluctant to confide in others because of a fear that the infor¬ mation will be used against them. Often such individuals are easily slighted and quick to react with anger or counterattack and are often hyper-vigilant in taking precautions against perceived threat. They tend to hold grudges for a long time, and seldom forgive slights, insults or injuries. When individuals with this disorder find themselves in a new situation, they intensely and narrowly search for confirmation of their expectations, with little appreciation of the total context. They are usually argumentative and exaggerate difficulties; "making mountains out of molehills." Such an individual can readily escalate a benign discussion into an argument with a contradictory and hos¬ tile attitude. They are very critical of others but have a great diffi¬ culty in accepting blame or criticism themselves. They tend to be over serious and to lack a true sense of humor. They tend to be rigid and unwilling to compromise, and may generate uneasiness and fear in others. Individuals with this disorder are keenly aware of power and rank and of who is superior or inferior, and are often envious and jealous of those in a position of power. They are aloof with a hostile distancing of themselves from others and are con¬ temptuous of people they see as weak, soft or sickly. Unlike some of the other personality disorders, the paranoid appears to have no redeeming social features, such as the charm and pleasant company often presented by psychopathic, narcissistic and histrionic personalities, or the initial polite and smooth demeanor of the passive-aggressive. Most of the interactive dimensions of the paranoid personality disorder are usually unappealing and prob¬ lematic. Because they are continually suspicious of others and "on guard" against possible attack, they create many conflicts within the work place through their misinterpretation of people's motives. Their propensity to exaggerate threats or challenges and to counter¬ attack tends to escalate simple conflicts and augment aggression within the organization. Their overcritical attitude towards others, their argumentative and belligerent style, tend to have a suppress¬ ing effect on the willingness of others to express appropriate dis¬ agreement with them, a condition that motivates camouflaging and/or displacing aggression. Unlike passive-aggressive individuals who restrain their aggres¬ sion when faced with an explicit retaliatory threat, the paranoid

86 Camouflaged Aggression regroups psychologically and counterattacks in a manner that often escalates conflict and hostility. Their tendency to be moralistic, grandiose and punitive may motivate some of them to embark on vigilant crusades against individuals or groups, which reaps ani¬ mosities and divisiveness within the ranks of the organization. Alliances between such individuals, cemented by their person¬ ality compatibility, appear to be possible and have been observed by myself. Two individuals with this disorder may team together under the paranoid "ideology" of suspiciousness and contempt for others and through a mutually resonating moralistic vigilance and schem¬ ing that compounds aggression. Tobak (1989) observed the frequent coexistence of an expedient mendacity with moralistic self-right¬ eousness in the paranoid character. In short, individuals with para¬ noid personality disorders are prolific producers and amplifiers of conflicts and can be major contributors to the quantum of aggression within the organization.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder Individuals with this disorder are typically preoccupied with cultivating (in fantasy or behavior) a grandiose image of themselves. They are driven to maintain this image of self-importance through constantly seeking attention and admiration from others. They are hypersensitive to criticism, arrogant, power seeking, self-centred, manipulative and imbued with a profound degree of entitlement that places their wishes above legal or ethical limits. The following are their primary characteristics: 1) Grandiosity: They have a grandiose sense of self-impor¬ tance and superiority (e.g., they exaggerate their talents and achievements) and expect to be noticed as "special." They entertain grandiose fantasies of unlimited success and a belief in their invulnerability, in their self-sufficiency and in their uniqueness. At the same time, they are referential, boastful and pretentious. 2) Interpersonal Relations: They require constant attention and admiration (e.g., they may keep fishing for compli¬ ments). They have a sense of entitlement: an unreasonable expectation of especially favorable treatment or a tendency to disregard or circumvent legal and ethical considerations while pursuing their goals. They often are interpersonally exploitive and manipulative, taking advantage of others to

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 87 achieve their own ends. The individual feels threatened by discovering goodness in others and defends against strong envy by devaluing them, attempting to control them or avoiding contact with them altogether. 3) Reaction: When these individuals fail to obtain what they want or are subjected to criticism, they may react with feel¬ ings of rage and vindictiveness or shame and humiliation. They react to failure as drastic personal defeat which can lead to vindictiveness or to suicidal tendencies and other self-destructive reactions. An unresponsive or unsupportive environment can lead them to experience transient mood states such as emptiness, boredom and meaninglessness. 4) Social and Moral Adaptation: Such individuals tend to be highly ambitious and achievement motivated. They are selfcentred and uncommitted to anyone; all goals and espoused notions and beliefs are upheld only in the service of self or self-image. They can be skilful and charming manipulators who have no genuine regard for values or rules. Their social history often reveals sexual promiscuity and antisocial behavior. The term malignant narcissism was introduced by Otto Kernberg in 1984. He used this designation to describe a characteristic combi¬ nation of grandiose and sadistic strivings of some narcissists. Kernberg outlined four features of this syndrome: 1) a typical nar¬ cissistic personality disorder, 2) antisocial behavior, 3) sadism and 4) a deeply paranoid orientation toward life. Individuals with malig¬ nant narcissism consistently attempt to destroy, symbolically cas¬ trate and dehumanize others. Their sadism can be expressed in ide¬ ological terms as they can become leaders of religious cults and political groups. In such contexts they may display an ability for concern and loyalty to their peers and followers and this distin¬ guishes them from the psychopathic personality proper. Their para¬ noid tendencies are manifested in their viewing of others as enemies or fools and in their preoccupation with conspiracies. I have observed cases involving a rapid transition from a mild narcissistic orientation towards a malignant one, after the acquisition by the individual of substantial wealth or after the attainment of a power¬ ful office. The toll of the narcissistic personality disorder on the organiza¬ tion is rather self evident. However, two traits that are typically characteristic of individuals with this disorder are particularly dan-

88 Camouflaged Aggression

gerous for organizations. They are: an elevated sense of entitlement and a deployment of the "splitting mechanism." Individuals with this disorder believe their feelings and their wishes are both legitimate and justified. Accordingly, they feel enti¬ tled to use anything at their disposal, or any person, to realize those wishes. The interests of the organization are often the victims of this grand sense of entitlement. Splitting, which is a mechanism common to all personality dis¬ orders, essentially involves a separation of a feeling or a relationship from its context. For example, a simple disagreement may suffice to make the narcissist react with overwhelming contempt and animos¬ ity on a partner with whom he/she has had a long-standing rela¬ tionship. The trusted friend and partner becomes an enemy who is hated absolutely and eternally. What such a victim finds most shocking is that all of the long standing history of cooperative and friendly relations suddenly becomes of no significance. It is as if the other party has no memory of the relationship. Through this split¬ ting mechanism, the narcissist can suddenly and radically shift his allegiance. A trusted friend can become an enemy; the partner may become an adversary; a colleague who previously was viewed with the deepest respect may come to be viewed with unqualified con¬ tempt. The organization itself can become a victim of the same patho¬ logical process; a virtual pawn of the narcissist's perverse sense of entitlement and splitting. The individual with this disorder can turn on the organization and bring it down even if he /she has heretofore worked tirelessly and long for it. In a spiteful and grandiose finale, the narcissist would communicate the message: "I created you and now I am going to destroy you." In my investigations of this disorder in the organizational con¬ text, I was able to observe another dynamic related to the splitting mechanism. This type of individual can spontaneously and with remarkable ease work for a certain project and against it at the same time. He can be equally geared, psychologically and practically, towards the promotion and towards the demise of a certain collec¬ tively beneficial project. If he expects to reap benefits, and particu¬ larly prestige, from supporting the venture, he will be vehemently for it. If that forthcoming prestige runs the risk of being shared by others, or if the thwarting of the venture can be attributed mainly to his own doing, then he will mobilize against it. Thus it is the degree of ego-aggrandizement obtained that determines the direction of his

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 89 commitment rather than the intrinsic social value of the collective venture. Rationalizations can always take care of either option. It is rather intriguing how the narcissistic ego-centredness can neutralize the contrasting relationship between construction and destruction. I prefer to call this proclivity the Narcissistic Principle of Equivalence. Not too long ago, I conducted a graduate seminar in organiza¬ tional behavior with a group of bankers. Cases of financial collapse of specific companies were analyzed with particular emphasis on the personality profile of the major player. It was a surprise to most seminar participants when they came to realize that the collapse of some of these companies appeared to have been the product of irra¬ tional decisions on the part of a key director, rather than the result of financial or market contingencies. What appears to lurk behind many fatal business decisions is not just a lack of business savvy or unfortunate timing or more global economic factors, but the malig¬ nant aggression of an enraged narcissist. Unrecognized and/or uncontrolled pathological narcissism can produce organizational collapse.

Antisocial Personality Disorder - the Psychopath Antisocial personality disorder is the term now used to refer to the psychopathic personality. An early comprehensive clinical pro¬ file of the psychopath was presented in 1941 by Harvey Cleckley (1976) in his classic book. The Mask of Sanity, an apt title which sug¬ gests that such individuals evidence few if any of the symptoms of mental illness, such as lack of contact with reality or delusions or anxiety, but persist in aberrant antisocial behavior. Cleckley com¬ prehensively described the clinical profile of the psychopath in terms of 16 characteristics; the following is a brief summary of them: 1) Egocentric, self-gratifying, hedonistic with lack of empathy or concern for others; 2) An absence of conscience, moral or ethical values, guilt or remorse; 3) Lack of love and attachment to individuals, institutions, places or ideas; 4) An ability to deceive and manipulate people, which involves masking, lying, mimicking and rationalizing. Psychopaths can be entertaining and charming;

90 Camouflaged Aggression

5) Impulsiveness, poor behavior controls and inability to fol¬ low a life plan; 6) A life history of antisocial behavior. The most salient behavioral features of psychopaths are their inadequate conscience development and their apparent lack of anx¬ iety and guilt. They may able to verbalize their appreciation and understanding of moral values, but their understanding is often shallow and the allegiance they may express to social values is usu¬ ally unrelated to their behavior. Even when they are caught in unac¬ ceptable behavior, they seem to be devoid of any feelings of remorse, shame or guilt. Their behavior seems to be uncontrolled by any con¬ sideration of its effects on other people. However, even though they are essentially amoral, their ability to impress, charm, manipulate and exploit others enables them not only to take advantage of them, but also to do so often without raising suspicion or getting caught. Even when caught, they may seem to be sincerely repentant and are often quickly forgiven as they use their humor and charm and their ability to rationalize their behavior to appease people. Although they are highly egocentric, they seem to have good insight into other people's needs and weaknesses and are very adept at winning their confidence and then exploiting them. Although they are able to win the admiration and support of other people, antisocial personalities are seldom able to make close friends because they are egocentric, non-empathetic and unable to experience or understand allegiance or love. Systematic empirical research of this disorder (e.g.. Hare, 1970; Hare & Schalling, 1978; Lykken, 1995) indicated that the disorder was associated with autonomic under-arousal and cortical immatu¬ rity, that such physiological under-stimulation might help to explain the psychopath's quest for excitement, his lack of anxiety and his failure to be influenced by threats of impending punishment. In fact, when psychopaths arrive at the "burned-out" stage that evidences a decrease in antisocial behavior towards old age, their autonomic and brain patterns start changing towards normal readings. There may also be genetic and/or physiological factors involved in their shal¬ low interpersonal attachments and their lack of empathy. The literature suggests that given their impulsiveness, need for excitement and a tendency for immediate gratification, psychopaths are seldom attracted to or capable of maintaining organizational careers. However, this may be true only for the more extreme cases who come to the attention of the authorities, i.e., those whose anti-

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 91

social behavior leads to their involvement in criminal activities. Many psychopaths are well educated, sophisticated achievers who are able to use their manipulative skills and charm to obtain power¬ ful positions, despite their lack of genuine allegiance to individuals or institutions. Their antisocial behavior is expressed within social and political institutions and is not limited to their general interper¬ sonal relationships or criminal behavior. Such "successful" psy¬ chopaths have a profile that is very similar to that of the narcissistic personality disorder and in some cases, they are almost undistinguishable. Many psychopaths are confined in correctional institu¬ tions, but the great majority of them manage to escape incarceration or even detection and prosecution even though they frequently engage in immoral and criminal behavior. Psychopaths can be found in every field of endeavor - in business, in universities, in schools and in churches. Many of them are never convicted of any crime. They may be functioning as lawyers, doctors, executives, professors, politicians, ministers. They are just as likely to be found working in businesses, government offices and professions as they are to be found in prisons or psychiatric hospitals. The alarm regarding the existence of an "adequate" or "success¬ ful" psychopath was sounded as early as 1957 by Norman Mailer. In an essay published in Dissent magazine (quoted in Harrington, 1972), Mailer prophesied that the psychopathic personality could become the central expression of human nature before the 20th cen¬ tury is over. He further suggested that our cultural direction is being influenced by psychopaths, as the condition of psychopathy is pres¬ ent in a host of people, including many politicians, newspaper columnists, entertainers and "half the executives of Hollywood, tel¬ evision and advertising." Fifteen years later, Harrington (1972), a writer and a journalist, set out to reassess the above thesis in a book containing observa¬ tions, interviews and descriptions of psychopathic individuals from all walks of life. His conclusion was that "psychopathy as illness and style have now merged. You can hardly, if at all, tell them apart any more" (p. 198). In response to Harrington, Cleckley (1976), in his fifth edition of The Mask of Sanity, conceded the reality of successful psychopaths and provided descriptions of psychopathic profession¬ als, including one who was a psychiatrist. The display of manipulative behavior of the average individual was studied by Christie and Geis (1970) under the topic of Machiavellianism. Christie developed a measure to assess this inter-

92 Camouflaged Aggression

personal style and formulated the following four-feature profile of the Machiavel: 1) a relative lack of affect in interpersonal relations and viewing of others as objects for manipulation; 2) a lack of con¬ cern with conventional morality; 3) a lack of gross psychopathology; 4) a low ideological commitment - more interest in tactics to a utili¬ tarian end rather than striving for an idealistic goal. The Machiavel profile can be viewed as a "satellite" of the psychopath. Psychopathic behavior can also be learned through having to adapt to socially unstable family or environmental conditions or through association with psychopathic models. Harrington's sug¬ gestion that psychopathology can progress from a personality style to an ethic was later echoed by Lasch (1979), who claimed that nar¬ cissistic behavior has become a socially accepted style of social inter¬ action and has become normative. "Adequate" psychopaths not only create interpersonal conflict within organizations by their devi¬ ous antisocial and manipulative behavior, they also promote the perception that egocentricity, manipulation and deceit are effective, acceptable and ethical interpersonal behaviors. The psychopath can undermine the values of the organization and its members.

Histrionic Personality Disorder The essential feature of the histrionic personality disorder is immaturity, emotional instability, pervasive and excessive emotion¬ ality and attention-seeking behavior. Individuals with this disorder are self-centred, vain and uncomfortable when they are not the cen¬ tre of attention. If ignored, they may do something dramatic to draw the focus of attention to themselves. These individuals are often over-reactive and inappropriately sexually provocative or seductive. They are overly concerned with impressing others and may spend excessive time and money on grooming and clothes and surround¬ ing themselves with the trappings of success. Individuals with this disorder often have a style of speech that is excessively impression¬ istic, lacking in detail and theatrical. In seeking to gain approval, histrionics resemble individuals with a narcissistic personality disorder. However, they usually have weaker egos that foster emotional shiftiness and poor ability to con¬ solidate power. They are suggestible, over sensitive to criticism and tend to consider relationships to be more intimate than they actual¬ ly are. Their seductive style can lead to unwarranted sexual advances. Although they often initiate a job or project with great

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 93 enthusiasm, their interest may dissipate quickly. They are often frus¬ trated by situations that involve delayed gratification. Long-term relationships may be neglected to make way for the excitement of new ones. The interpersonal relationships of such individuals are usually stormy and continuously generate tensions and conflicts in the work place.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder The essential features of the obsessive-compulsive personality disorder are a preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism and control, at the expense of flexibility, openness and efficiency. Individuals with this disorder seek to maintain a sense of control over themselves and others through painstaking attention to rules, trivial details, procedures, lists, schedules or forms, to the extent that the major purpose of the activity is lost. Their perfectionism and pre¬ occupation with trivia tends to interfere with their allocation of time and with task completion. They may be excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friend¬ ships. They are over-conscientious, scrupulous and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics and procedure. They tend to adopt a miserly spending style towards self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded, not expended or invested. They evidence rigidity and stubbornness in most contexts and are reluctant to del¬ egate tasks or work to others unless the delegate conforms precisely to the compulsive's procedures. The behavior patterns of this disorder are somewhat similar to those of the neurotic who evidences obsessive-compulsive behavior. In the case of the neurotic, they often experience undesired thoughts (obsessions) and actions (compulsions) which are a source of extreme anxiety because the individual recognizes that they are irra¬ tional, but cannot control them. Individuals with obsessive-compul¬ sive personality disorder, on the other hand, may be anxious about getting all their work done in keeping with their exacting standards, but are not anxious about their compulsion itself. They appear to be oblivious to the fact that their style can be problematic and that other people can be distressed by it. The organizational implications of this personality style are rather obvious. Their rigidity, stubbornness and morbid clinging to procedure can generate frustration, stagnation and demoralization.

94 Camouflaged Aggression

Avoidant Personality Disorder Individuals with this disorder are hypersensitive to rejection, criticism and ridicule. They are too fearful of potential rejection to seek out others, voice opinions or take positions. Their everyday interpersonal relations are often very limited partly because they avoid interactions and partly because their excessive placidity makes them unattractive to others. They may be able to cope rea¬ sonably well in whatever circumscribed relationships they do have without major conflicts. However, in organizations they can indi¬ rectly generate a great deal of aggression. Their passivity and unassertiveness tends to create a point of least resistance which attracts aggression both towards them and towards people working with them. Moreover, the non-confrontational and indecisive behav¬ ior of these individuals handicaps their ability to contain the aggres¬ siveness of employees working with them or to protect those work¬ ing under them. Thus, by attracting and failing to contain aggres¬ sion, they serve to catalyze and augment it within the organization. The remaining three personality disorders are: Borderline, who manifests mood instability, identity disturbance and weak ego; Schizoid, who is typically a loner and lacking in the social skills needed to form social relations; and Schizotypal, who is also seclusive, eccentric in communication and behavior, and resorts to high¬ ly personalized and superstitious thinking. All of these disorders have in common a weak ego organization, poor interpersonal skills, and ego-centred styles of behavior that are chronic and socially inad¬ equate.

Cocktails of Personality Disorders Anyone can engage fully and intensely in any form of camou¬ flaged aggression under conducive organizational and emotional conditions. When individuals repeatedly engage in manipulation and deception and tend to do so callously, then one is justified in looking for a possible enduring personality disorder. The modus operandi in personality disorders is highly predictable and the under¬ standing of such personality organizations allows for the prediction and for devising defenses against their antisocial behavior. The above described types can be viewed as extreme or ideal types when attempting to make a diagnostic assessment, but the fact is that they do exist in extreme and milder forms. They also may appear in certain combinations within a single individual profile.

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 95

Actually, this is to be expected, since personality disorders share a common psychological substrate, such as failed separation-individ¬ uation, lack of object constancy and a defective superego that is weak and inconsistent. Personality disorders also share the reliance on primitive defenses including splitting, projective identification, denial, primitive idealization, omnipotence and devaluation, which differ from those defenses used at a higher level of character organ¬ ization (e.g., repression, reaction formation, conversion and dis¬ placement). Thus the DSMIII-R (1987) describes variations in certain disorders in terms of features from another, such as narcissistic and passive-aggressive orientations in the paranoid personality disor¬ der. Overlaps between paranoid and antisocial, histrionic and pas¬ sive-aggressive, narcissistic and antisocial, and paranoid and pas¬ sive-aggressive are common (Akhtar, 1995). Kernberg's (1984) malignant narcissism is a cocktail of narcissism, psychopathy and paranoia. According to Stone (1993) prominent narcissistic traits can coex¬ ist with any of the personality disorders. My observations tend to concur with those of Stone; whenever a configuration of a personal¬ ity disorder was identified, a concomitant measure of pathological narcissism was also manifest. It appears that pathological narcissism (involving extreme self-centredness) is an underlying feature of all such disorders and perhaps this is what gives personality disorders the distinction of social malignancy. To be able to distinguish the manipulative and the mendacious behaviors of the "disordered" from those exhibited by "normals" one needs more than intuition; knowledge of the broader context of the interaction, knowledge of past patterns of the individual's behavior and proper understanding of the nature of personality dis¬ orders are required. Researching the impact of personality disorders in organizations is best carried, within normal work conditions. Some of the novel constructs suggested in this book may be valuable in motivating and guiding subsequent systematic research. One interesting field observation was relayed to me by a politi¬ cal veteran from the '60s in a Mediterranean country. He described the profile of individuals from Marxist political groups who under¬ took the tasks of infiltrating certain social organizations. The goal was either to wreck and dismantle such voluntary organizations or to dominate them and keep them in a weakened state - half dead. These undertakings were ideologically justified by the perception of certain social organizations as either bourgeois-serving entities or as

96 Camouflaged Aggression impediments to the coming "revolution." These infiltrators were self-recruited and evidenced pronounced inclinations towards para¬ noid conspiratorial thinking, manipulativeness and Machiavellian¬ ism. The ideological sanctioning of their camouflaged aggression neutralized any guilt or ambivalence associated with the mission and allowed them to happily indulge all their character pathology. My acquaintance described the heightened excitement, thrill and enthusiasm which accompanied their "tactical" scheming. What he recalls most vividly was the "smile"; an exuberant, complacent, con¬ gratulatory and self-assured smile they exchanged when they met to review operations. When I explained to my acquaintance the idea of optimal psycho-structural adaptation (psycho-structural marriage), he yelled: "but of course...even their incompetence was happily mar¬ ried." Apparently, in cases when the infiltrators managed to take over as the directors of some of these associations, they did not have the adequate skills to manage them. Thus managing the association in a compromised and inadequate manner appealed both to their original goal of crippling the organization and to their actual lack of skills and the least effort principle. I think that research should focus on such harmonious adaptations between pathological personality proclivities and organizational roles and structures; adaptations that are psychologically functional for the incumbent but dysfunctional to the organization.

Personality Disorders and Voluntary Organizations Voluntary organizations differ from business or government in that their goals and membership are community based; they are usually non-profit or charitable; they have less stringent formal structures; and operate on limited volunteered time and limited budget that is often raised through donations. These open and less binding features of voluntary associations can become highly attrac¬ tive to individuals with personality disorders and particularly to the flamboyant types, such as the narcissistic, psychopathic, paranoid and histrionic personalities. A dialectical relationship, in fact, tends to exist between voluntary associations and individuals with per¬ sonality disorders; they frequently initiate or supply the enthusiasm and energy for the sprouting of these associations but, at the same time, they embody the seeds of destruction and eventual demise of these very associations. Voluntary associations become perceived by these persons as open pastures where their egos can graze on the attention, the

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 97

nerves and energies of members. These organizations are generally not equipped to radically deal with them due to the voluntary and community nature of the enterprise and this organizational vulner¬ ability allows these individuals to perpetuate a chronic presence. When such persons get entrenched within the board of directors, they can lead to the collapse of these associations; more often they cause their weakening, as volunteers, due to the generated conflicts, start to lose enthusiasm, pull out or become scarce. It should be noted that these persons can sometimes be very entertaining and jolly and can volunteer for tasks with great dedication; however, when assessed over the total period of their involvement, their neg¬ ative input appears to outweigh their positive one. The non-profit goals and less stringent organization of voluntary associations tend to encourage spontaneous and less masked self expression, including behaviors stemming from personality disor¬ ders. Accordingly, voluntary associations provide a convenient medium for the study of interactive patterns of various personality disorders. One of the areas that appear, to have not been addressed is how such individuals interact among each other. Observations by myself and some colleagues indicated one surprising pattern, name¬ ly, a level of mutual support, mutual defense and concurrence on positions, particularly when a member with a style affinity is radi¬ cally challenged. Given the inherent self-centredness in all these dis¬ orders, such alliances become quite intriguing regardless of how temporary they may be. One explanation offered by Obeid (1999) suggests that by affirming each other as individuals, they tend to affirm the viability of mendacity and manipulativeness in the face of ethical intimidation. Thus this solidarity is a strategic counter-intim¬ idation aimed against those who brandish the swords of truthful¬ ness and honesty and expect speedy gains.

Personality Disorders and Political Organizations One of the most pivotal features in personality disorders, and particularly of the flamboyant ones, is the proclivity to focus chal¬ lenge on the personal ego. The activities of impressing, charming, outwitting, out-maneuvering, manipulating, competing with, undermining and defeating are energies that are essentially directed at someone's ego instead of being directed at an objective social task that is intrinsically viable. Even when these individuals undertake organized political tasks within a political party, their ultimate motive is either self-aggrandizement or the out-bidding and chal-

98 Camouflaged Aggression

lenging of someone. Their self-expression and self-affirmation are drastically dependent on the presence of other egos in convenient settings where they can "feed" on the attention and the polemics generated. Accordingly, the psychological survival of these individ¬ uals is tied parasitically to the political movement, which can pro¬ vide them with their preferred mediums of self expression. The sac¬ rifice of ideological and other abstract principled commitments, demoralization and loss of party cohesiveness are the inevitable out¬ comes of this ego-centred and ego-targeting orientation of the per¬ sonality disordered. People involved in political movements often attribute many expressions of unprincipled, corrupt and traitorous behavior to human nature or to the nature of political enterprise itself. These attributions are dangerously generalized and inaccurate. A close examination will likely reveal that most of the divisive behavior is perpetrated by or is a repercussion of the conduct of only a few entrenched individuals. Instead of attributing deviousness and cor¬ ruption to the political activity, a more accurate statement would be that politics tends to attract individuals with disordered personali¬ ties who tend be devious and corrupt, and for whom political strat¬ egy is synonymous with deceit. Criminological research (e.g., Farrington, 1987) has found that the larger portions of criminal offenses are committed by a relatively small number of chronic offenders. This relationship should also hold for antisocial behavior within political organizations. Although anybody can perpetrate conflict and discord within the ranks of a political party, most of the disruptive and demoralizing behavior may be traceable to a rela¬ tively few chronically disordered individuals who can also be charming, convincing and charismatic. The challenge becomes how to identify and evaluate their impact and how to curtail their pres¬ ence. It is my opinion that ideological political movements, particular¬ ly in developing countries, that seek the realization of social ideals, will not go very far unless they develop mechanisms to limit the presence of camouflaged antisocials in their ranks. Pathological nar¬ cissism appears to be the disorder most implicated in the politics of developing countries. The founding members of any political move¬ ment will be destined to circuitous, bumpy and thorny paths if they include within their ranks individuals with personality disorders. The ideals, values and goals of an aspiring political movement will be drastically compromised if it fails to recognize and contain the

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 99

various personality cocktails of pathological narcissism, psychopa¬ thy, Machiavellianism and paranoia that it is bound to attract as soon as it achieves measures of success. Procedures for the identifi¬ cation, screening and the removal of disordered personalities should be promoted as essential managerial and leadership skills in any political movement with authentic social ideals.

Can Camouflaged Aggression Become Addictive? We have seen that personality disorders provide a motivational disposition for engaging in camouflaged aggression. Camouflaged aggression is also learned and transmitted in close interactive set¬ tings. Personality disorders can lend additional elements of psy¬ chopathology, extremism and chronicity to camouflaged aggression, but in both cases, the aggressive behavior is maintained by means of the organizational structures and position adaptation. The question arises whether camouflaged aggression can be further propelled by its own psychological momentum; that is, can it become addictive? Camouflaged aggression involves mental games which, if suc¬ cessfully performed, can alleviate boredom, boost sense of power and reduce alienation. Being psychologically rewarding, these men¬ tal games can become the medium of an obsessive preoccupation among normals. It is feasible that the techniques can become obses¬ sive expressions, as in the case of "impulse ridden" forms of neu¬ roses observed in gambling and in certain forms of compulsive sex¬ ual behavior. Furthermore, techniques of camouflaged aggression, as described in chapter three, can be totally relied upon as means of power acquisition and, as a result of being intimately tied to power, they can be pursued for their own sake; they become, like power, goals in themselves. Although all the chronic dispensers of camou¬ flaged aggression I have known also appeared to feature a broader form of character pathology, I have heard about "nice guys" who were chronically obsessed with this behavior. One senior adminis¬ trator is reported to have confessed: "If I cannot find someone to manipulate, I will manipulate myself." The addictive dimension of camouflaged aggression needs to be researched.

The Balance Sheet in Personality Disorders An important relationship that may be worth investigating is the ratio between the positive and the negative input that an organiza-

100 Camouflaged Aggression

tion receives from an employee with a personality disorder. Despite their destructive potential, persons with personality disorders have been observed to embark on certain organizational tasks with great zeal and efficiency and sometimes "beyond the call of duty." These ventures, which are often short lived, can produce spectacular results. This flamboyant positive input can neutralize a great deal of their past negative input and can be interpreted as part of a manip¬ ulative strategy; an attempt to smoke screen an ugly record. I am tempted on the basis of my observations to go beyond this interpre¬ tation and to hypothesize the existence of a deeply embedded for¬ mula that insures that the negative input of the disordered person ultimately outweighs the positive one, regardless of how successful is the psycho-structural fit. This ratio is somehow mathematically programmed at an unconscious level and is destined to be tilted against the organization. This ratio relationship can be investigated by means of a longi¬ tudinal study that would record the inputs of such subjects and assess them by means of a negative/positive weighted scale and in comparison with controls. If research evidence can support the tilt¬ ed ratio in favor of negative organizational input, then this relation¬ ship can also be used for the diagnostic identification of personality disorders within organizations.

The Impact of Camouflaged Aggression on Health The research on workplace physical and emotional stressors and their impact on mental and physical health is extensive. Two main characteristics of camouflaged aggression need to be noted in this context. First, camouflaged aggression has a slow cathartic release. The protracted nature of this aggression and its suppression of anger slows down the catharsis process and allows aggression to accumu¬ late in individuals engaging in it. What further slows down the cathartic process is the structurally induced reliance on the displace¬ ment of aggression. Berkowitz (1989) has contended that strongly frustrated individuals can reduce their aggression only through inflicting harm upon the actual frustrator or aggressor. Successful catharsis appears to be tied, not to any discharge of aggression, but to successful attainment of the aggressive goal, namely, the retalia¬ tion against the actual perpetrator (if he can be identified). Unexpressed aggression can induce a host of psychosomatic illness¬ es.

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 101

Second, the masked nature of camouflaged aggression disorgan¬ izes the experience and the reaction to aggression. The difficulty in identifying the injury and in locating blame diffuses consciousness of conflict and precludes proper differentiation, channeling and sub¬ sequent externalization of hostility. The lack of differentiation and channeling of aggression can lead to its denial: "there is no prob¬ lem." Instead of "psychologizing" and externalizing conflict and aggression, denial leads to their somatization. The excessive reliance on the mechanism of denial was found to be associated with the development of cancer (e.g., Simonton, 1978). Thus camouflaged aggression can lead certain individuals to deny their victimization and their need to retaliate and accordingly induce them to redirect aggression against their bodies and risk serious illnesses.

Camouflaged Aggression and “Normal” Personality Organizations Conflict Avoidance as a Generalized Personality Syndrome Conflict avoidance is by no means confined to the avoidant per¬ sonality disorder, as it can be easily observed in "normally" func¬ tioning individuals. Since conflict and its resolution are part of daily social living, deficiencies in the ability to deal adequately with con¬ flict can have problematic social consequences. The consistent ten¬ dency to avoid confrontation may be a function of an inadequate personality or a weak ego, but it may also be a consequence of social norms that promote conflict-avoidance rather than confrontational resolutions. In a book solely dedicated to this issue (Abdennur, 1987), I proposed that conflict avoidance (non-confrontational), when it permeates social and political institutions, can have dys¬ functional consequences that are as detrimental as those arising from the tendency to polemicize and confront. A tendency to conflict avoidance can be a generalized and per¬ manent orientation which is pervasive throughout the various levels of personality, a characteristic which has been labeled the "Conflict Resolution Syndrome." My (1987) research found conflict avoidance choices and preferences to be consistent through several domains of an individual's functioning: perceptual, cognitive, psychodynamic, aesthetic, recreational and political domains. Among the seven traits characterizing Conflict Avoidance Syndrome is excessive fear of vio¬ lent aggression, concreteness and exhibitionism.

102 Camouflaged Aggression

A major impact of a conflict avoidance style of interpersonal interaction is that it denies the possibility of achieving adequate solutions to problems, because it leads the individual to seek com¬ promises that either have little impact on the problem or tend to pro¬ long it. Expediency is often substituted for principle. Individuals with this orientation can also distort the perception of problems and issues in order to accommodate them to their conflict avoidant methods of intervention. For example, the plight of children in third world countries is operationally defined as an issue of organizing charitable relief and of sponsoring of some children by families in the west. While the intervention can improve the lot of some cases, it leaves the causes of the problem unaddressed and out of the pic¬ ture. Another dangerous aspect of the conflict avoidance orientation is that individuals seek to hire and recruit into organizations others with a similar orientation - those who will not rock the boat. Thus, conflict avoidants can come to predominate in number within an organization and influence its normative standards and approaches in a qualitative manner. Many social and political organizations have been rendered impotent by such individuals, who promote compromise up to its highest level of ineffectiveness. Unassertive¬ ness and banality at the level of political leadership can also affect business norms in society. The current unjustified lack of economic rigor in Canada may be tied to this personality type having achieved institutional dominance. The impact of individuals with the conflict avoidance orienta¬ tion on camouflaged aggression is aggravating in three ways. First, they are more in tune with passive and camouflaged aggression, and are more likely to engage in it. Second, their pronounced non-confrontational behavior precludes attempts at making conflicts explic¬ it and taking radical measures to end or contain them. Third, they constitute a non-confrontational matrix that allows a converse, and equally adverse, personality profile to perpetuate itself in manage¬ ment. That converse profile can be identified as a growing class of overtly-aggressive, arrogantly-intimidating and self-serving man¬ agers. The unchallenging and passive disposition of conflict avoidants may also allow the latter to thrive.

Camouflaged Aggression & Personality 103

An Anti-Organizational Personality Type: “ An Arrogant, Ignorant and Corrupt Normal” Theories of psychological types propose sets of psychological traits and attitudes to describe basic individual preferences accom¬ panying a person's interaction with his/her environment. Most psy¬ chological types, such as those of Jung (1923) and Eysenck (1981) have their starting point from identifiable personality differences. The model proposed here identifies three personality features and at the same time links them to identifiable social conditions which can largely account for these features as a result of the process of social¬ ization. The identifiable social conditions are typically found in the social and cultural reality of a socio-economic class that is often located in third world countries, and whose members are character¬ ized by mercantile economic activity, material prosperity and glob¬ al mobility. When all three personality features are found in the same individual, they dynamically interact to constitute a personal¬ ity orientation that is part of a normally functioning individual but is destructive to organizations. 1. Aggrandized Ego. The trading operations and the diverse, short-term business ventures by which the individual makes his living do not impose stringent corporate structures on him. He is basically the master of his operations and his own boss. Most of his business relationships are somewhat per¬ sonal and can be influenced directly by his personal initia¬ tives and direct negotiations, even when he relies on inter¬ mediaries. With high tech expanded communication and mobility he becomes the author of his destiny. Financial suc¬ cess and prosperity will further lend credibility to his meth¬ ods and boost his ego in a narcissistic manner. He can become a model or ideal for his own self and for others close to him. 2. Methodological Ignorance. This intellectual state is the direct product of the inadequate educational systems. A poor aca¬ demic training can be aggravated by excessive relocation and the resultant haphazard changes in cultural back¬ grounds and curricula. The academic or intellectual handi¬ cap that a professional from this class suffers from is a poor¬ ly developed scientific and methodological perspective. There is a pronounced weakness in integrated thinking and in general abstract reasoning. Knowledge is implicitly defined as practically useful information. Sophistication

104 Camouflaged Aggression

(e.g., learning many languages) rather than systematic and theoretical knowledge is valued or sought. Furthermore, the mercantile consumerist subculture in which he partakes hardly encourages or rewards the reading of lengthy scien¬ tific or scholarly books. His thinking style remains concrete, intuitive and pragmatic. 3. Compromised Organizational Ethicality. This state can be mainly attributed to not having worked or been socialized into a large corporate or industrial entity. Large corporations or industries structure and curtail the ego. They impose norms that promote respect of time, respect of the reality and rights of interacting others, respect for organizational demands, responsibility for one's decisions, and an objective as opposed to projective and self-serving view of reality. The mercantile enterprise not only fails to impart these norms, it tends to promote their opposites: fluid and essentially selfcentred norms. The combination of poor academic discipline with ethical fluid¬ ity may compromise the scope and quality of performance of an individual, but his harmful impact may be easy to restrain and con¬ tain. It is when the narcissistic aggrandized ego enters the combina¬ tion that a new personality amalgam is formed that is extremely destructive to organizations. It is only with the addition of the aggrandized ego that this personality's lack of restraint is further compounded and armored. Under the impact of this amalgam the individual perceives the organization as an impediment and in any dealing with it he attempts to circumvent it or manipulate its rules and employees for his personal ends. His methods of operation are extremely individualistic and non-corporate. He has an inherent dis¬ dain for corporate norms, or a narcissistic admiration for his style that he would resort to bribery and other corrupting practices even when it is not needed. This profile can be seen as the anti-organiza¬ tional personality par excellence. Under the worst scenario this for¬ mula can be presented as: Arrogant + Ignorant + Corrupt = Antiorganizational Person. This profile may be a dominant one among globally operating businessmen.

Conclusion Personality disorders, more than all other personality abnormal¬ ities, are responsible for most of the antisocial behavior perpetrated

Camouflaged Aggression b Personality 105

against society. They undermine the foundations of social and orga¬ nizational integration. It is important not to confuse personality dis¬ orders with other forms of psychopathology, or to explain them away as personal idiosyncrasies, or to think that they can be helped by the kind of intervention applicable to neurotic symptoms. Traditional mental health counseling and therapy programs have never been found to be effective with personality disorders (Hare, 1993a; Ross & Antonowitcz, 1994). Management and communica¬ tion-improving training courses are not likely to be effective either. Neutralizing the organizational destructive impact of the personali¬ ty disordered can best be achieved by careful personnel screening, detection and the application of approaches described in chapter seven. What Hare (1993b) had said of psychopaths, that "if we can¬ not spot them we are doomed to be their victims, both as individu¬ als and as a society," also applies to all other personality disorders. A traditional managerial wisdom needs to be reclaimed, namely, that if you want to have employees who are loyal, ethical and with congenial personalities, you will have to recruit them.

CHAPTER VI Socio-cuitural Factors In Camouflaged Aggression

It is not only pathological personalities who evidence camou¬ flaged aggression. Because aggression is engendered by interacting individual and situational factors in the organizations in which we operate, all of us are likely to be perpetrators (and victims) of such acts. In addition to the situational and personality sources of cam¬ ouflaged aggression, there are socio-cultural factors that also con¬ tribute to its propagation.

Alienation Contemporary Western society encourages people to strive for individualized goals, for self-actualization and success, usually operationalized in terms of financial independence and con¬ sumerism. However, professional success and access to consumer goods may not lead to actual power and autonomy, since these are confined to relatively few social roles; ones that are usually difficult to attain. Furthermore, individualism precludes the development of cohesive social groups that can endow individual members with a sense of belonging and identity. Thus a large number of people, par¬ ticularly in urban mass societies, experience social alienation, the symptoms of which are a sense of powerlessness, marginality, isola¬ tion and meaninglessness. Some individuals alleviate their sense of alienation by engaging in camouflaged aggression. Many individu¬ als engage in the power games involved in camouflaged aggression in order to compensate for feelings of lack of power and self-worth.

Anomie Anomie is a term coined by Durkheim over 100 years ago to refer to the state of normlessness associated with rapid social change, migration, mobility, cultural heterogeneity and culture con¬ flict. Durkheim believed that these conditions have a disorganizing impact on the uniformity and integration of the norms of conduct in society. When the uniformity and integration of norms are under¬ mined, their regulative and controlling function tends to weaken 107

108 Camouflaged Aggression

and this in turn leads to uncertainty, social and political apathy, and lack of strong commitment to belief systems. It also leads to deviant behavior. Because they lack strong commitments to social institu¬ tions or to belief systems, individuals experiencing anomia (anomie at the individual subjective level) are less likely to resist indulging in camouflaged aggression. They are also less likely to restrain others from employing it. Malignant aggression within the organization is particularly aggravated by the state of normlessness. Malignant aggression was defined in chapter four as aggression that is stripped of its norma¬ tive structuring; aggression propelled solely by the need for tension release and a convenient situation. Such regressive expression of aggression is similar to indiscriminate and random mass murder. Both can be seen as having anomie as an underlying etiological fac¬ tor. Camouflaged aggression not only contributes to hydraulic and anomic forms of delivery, it also contributes to reactions that are sometimes explosive. The slow and at times blocked avenues for cathartic release that characterize camouflaged aggression allow aggression to accumulate and become prone to explosive physical reactions. These physical (violent) reactions carry the same charac¬ teristics of the aggression that caused them. The explosive reactions seen in mass murder are also hydraulically expressed (on conven¬ ient targets) and are anomic (random and usually without consider¬ ation of principles of justice). For example, after being subjected to a lengthy period of camouflaged aggression, an employee might return to his work place with a gun and shoot, not at an identified culprit, but at anyone he encounters. The aggressive reaction is gen¬ eralized, unfocussed, blind and nihilistic. Valery Fabrikant, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, in the morning of a day in 1992, brandished a gun and shot four of his colleagues. Subsequent investigations revealed that only one of the victims was directly involved in the protracted intrigues and manipulations regarding research funding which appeared to motivate the murderous reaction. The true "culprits" escaped injury. Instead of focusing on the nature of organizational forces that contribute to such behavior, all investigations advanced by the media tend to dwell on biographical factors in the offender's social history; factors which are common to millions of non-criminal others and can hardly explain anything.

Socio-cultural Factors in Camouflaged Aggression 109

Malignant (anomic and hydraulic) reactions to camouflaged aggression also fail to communicate any redeeming social message, such as identifying culpability or deterrence. The violently explod¬ ing perpetrator is often construed as suffering from personal abnor¬ malities or psychopathology and the socially structured camou¬ flaged aggression hardly enters the picture of the "problem/'

Learning and Cultural Transmission The acquisition and dissemination of camouflaged aggression within and between social groups, and through them to the culture as a whole, is a very simple learning process. Interaction in an organ¬ ization in which camouflaged aggression is prevalent (i.e., most organizations) leads to a type of learning that has been analyzed by Sutherland (1947) as occurring in close interpersonal interactions. It consists of two processes: one is learning the techniques - the behav¬ ioral skills; the second is learning the attitudes and rationalizations that justify and legitimate such behavior. Social learning theory emphasizes the interactive nature of cog¬ nitive, behavioral and environmental determinants. According to Albert Bandura (1986), the main representative of the social learning approach, this learning takes place in two steps: First, the person observes how others act and then acquires a mental picture of the act and its consequences. Second, the person acts out the acquired image, and if the consequences are positive, he or she tends to do it again. The learning process is enhanced when the emulated models possess authority and charisma. Camouflaged aggression is transmitted (both as a technique and as an accepted practice) from one generation of employees to the next by means of those learning processes. Its acquisition through learning processes helps to explain the differential prevalence of camouflaged aggression within similar sections of an organization. High levels of entrenchment of camouflaged aggression in certain sections is often traceable to practitioners who pioneered the prac¬ tice.

Narcissistic Values In his well known book, Culture of Narcissism (1979), Christopher Lasch proposed that the personality features found in pathological narcissism are becoming the characteristics of the norms and social

110 Camouflaged Aggression

orientations of large segments of contemporary North American society. Self-centredness (the looking after number one), self-aggran¬ dizement, entitlement and manipulativeness are promoted and rein¬ forced by contemporary structural and normative social forces. Individualism, which involves a lack of connectedness to a cohesive group and an emphasis on personal success and personal acquisi¬ tion, has led pathological personal characteristics to be viewed as acceptable and valuable. The impact of the narcissistic normative style on camouflaged aggression is apparent and no doubt significant. The more managers become geared towards self-aggrandizement, as operationalized in terms of personal power and financial gain, the more they are moti¬ vated to use the organization for their personal ends, the more antagonism they are likely to draw from others and the more likely they are to resort to manipulation and deception in order to realize their goals. Other factors can enter the scene and aggravate the potential for camouflaged aggression. The attainment of a higher university degree can enhance an administrator's confidence, and contribute to the advancement of the organization. However, within a narcissistic cultural setting, higher education can have certain diminishing returns because it can augment vanity. In pathological narcissism, vanity is a perversion of the inner sense of honor or self-respect; it is the externalization and alienation of honor as it becomes a part of public image. The moral restraining force of honor may cease to operate as concern is exclusively diverted to the defense and main¬ tenance of a grand and elevated public image. In this narcissistic context, high educational attainment may serve to further expand the sense of vanity. Although education may be essential to the achieved role, the high office and the aggrandized conception of self incorporates higher education as an aspect of an ascribed role. In the sociological literature, the main distinction between the achieved role and the ascribed role lies in the fact that people would defend more rigorously challenges or criticisms made against their ascribed roles, than they would against their achieved roles. For example, an individual may not be threatened by the admission or accusation that he is not a financial success, but he would be threatened by any insinuation that he is not a "man," a good father or a true leader. Thus the Ph.D may be accommodated as an ascription rather than an achievement, and in his own narcissistically fogged eyes, the man¬ ager with a Ph.D. may be a contemporary crown prince. This grand

Socio-cultural Factors in Camouflaged Aggression 111

self-image needs to be maintained by vigilant efforts to promote self and suppress whatever constitutes a threat to status. The classical bureaucrat is committed to the status quo and resists innovative and creative ideas. But in this context the serious threat to creative ideas comes, quite paradoxically, from the aca¬ demic administrator. New ideas are not suppressed because they constitute a challenge to the status quo, but because they are an affront to the narcissism of the department's crown prince. The actu¬ al reason for suppressing the new idea is because it is not his own; his name would not appear in the final report or in the published paper, nor would he be delivering a paper on the research idea to a conference attended by many of his peers, and accordingly glory goes to someone else. Suppressing or sabotaging a new idea or proj¬ ect cannot be done by flat rejection, but rather by orchestrated sub¬ terfuges typically highlighting an initial theoretical endorsement of the idea and a subsequent bemoaning of funding or administrative difficulties. I have frequently heard nostalgic remarks made by senior pub¬ lic servants in relation to administrators who were veterans of the Second World War, who were retrained for government jobs and who retired during the early 70s. These administrations kept their word, articulated their positions on issues, had a pronounced sense of what is right and wrong and had some overriding concern for the interest of society. With the advent of the Ph.D. managers in the 80s, these qualities lost were to personal career aggrandizement and "empire building." The technical gains afforded to public organiza¬ tions by the advent of these sophistical incumbents were compro¬ mised by losses at the ethical and interpersonal levels.

Cross-Cultural Importation There is another dimension to social learning and cultural trans¬ mission: the importation of camouflaged aggression into cultures where such techniques have heretofore been absent. This importa¬ tion can be observed when an individual from a less developed cul¬ ture returns home from a developed country with educational and organizational experience and takes over an administrative position. Many returning graduates and professionals tend to bring back to their countries more than professional knowledge and expertise. Techniques of camouflaged aggression may well be part of the

112 Camouflaged Aggression

returnee's luggage and items that are secretly prized and admired as tools of a "superior intellect." Observations I made at some public organizations in two devel¬ oping countries indicate that camouflaged aggression in its western expression is not yet entrenched in the bureaucracies of these coun¬ tries. However, other forms of interpersonal aggression and conflict such as rivalries, feuds and alliances appear to be extensive. The rel¬ atively small size of these organizations and the lesser reliance on formalization in upper management may be partially responsible for the apparent blocking of camouflaged aggression. But a factor that would seem to have more significant impact in limiting camou¬ flaged aggression is a culturally-ingrained tendency to openly express conflicts (position taking, value declaration, hostility, blame, rationalization) among co-workers and associates. This cultural ten¬ dency essentially seeks to engage others in the dispute in order to solicit their input for the ultimate goal of resolving the conflict. By verbalizing the dispute openly to others, the strategic orientation towards the conflict necessarily becomes confrontational as the efforts of interveners become geared towards a just reconciliation. An expressive gesture was performed by one of my hosts, a sen¬ ior director. He placed a bottle of tranquilizer on his desk, in full view, in an attempt to highlight the fact that his current dispute with another director is causing him a great deal of stress. Hostile remarks, criticisms and justifications from both parties tended to involve other concerned staff in the dispute, who in turn exerted efforts towards a reconciliation. Camouflaged aggression presup¬ poses the exact opposite strategy; it demands suppression of hostil¬ ity and masking the conflict by smiles and denials while mobilizing for a protracted, insidious and undeclared war. This confrontational cultural orientation can delay or (if encouraged and refined) block this impending organizational virus in countries that have not yet been plagued by it. With respect to the importation of camouflaged aggression, my observations revealed that the returning administrator can initiate and plague his section with it. Techniques of camouflaged aggres¬ sion may also become superimposed on an already entrenched con¬ dition of influence peddling and lack of organization. Thus, these imports can seriously aggravate the current organizational failures in such societies. One of the characteristics of endemic camouflaged aggression in the observed settings appears to be its intensity. It seems that the

Socio-cultural Factors in Camouflaged Aggression 113

recipients of camouflaged aggression respond to the aggression, not as part of an organizational game, but from a more abstract cultural perspective such as a "stab in the back" or "treachery." Under such conditions camouflaged aggression will soar and aggravate other existing organizational problems. It is unfortunate that the victim's response to camouflaged aggression tends to be of the same quality, since the organization conditions both the stimulus and the response. Good candidates for learning and perpetrating camou¬ flaged aggression appear to be those who have stable positions, light workloads and are under no compulsion to pursue productive or creative work ventures. Camouflaged aggression can thus become the preferred sport of the idle and uncreative employee in third world countries.

Anti-Confrontation Values The fourth major contributory factor is normative and ideologi¬ cal; it is all of the unexamined notions, misconceptions, cliches and faulty inferences that are employed to implicitly define confronta¬ tional action as dangerous and uncivilized. This ideological reper¬ toire does not represent an intellectually integrated position towards aggression; rather it is more of a chain of value assumptions and inferences that, in a consorted way, serve to promote negative atti¬ tudes towards confrontation. There are seven such notions:

1. Violence as absolutely bad Over the past three decades, the term violence has undergone a metamorphosis at the level of its public use. The recent preoccupa¬ tion with violence in the sensationalized and politicized context of spousal assault has gradually lead to the overloading of the mean¬ ing of the word. This preoccupation with the issue and the term has allowed it to go beyond its dictionary and traditional definition, which refers to the "use of physical force to injure or to abuse," and now is frequently used to refer to many behaviors that are aggres¬ sive or destructive, but not necessarily violent in the original sense of the word. This conceptual overloading has tended to attribute a generic status to the term violence, a status that should have been limited to that of aggression. It has also led to downplaying the seri¬ ousness of non-violent forms of aggression, which can be much more injurious. For example, punching someone will get a far greater outcry and outrage than more deeply and more permanent-

114 Camouflaged Aggression

ly victimizing someone by behaving in ways which lead them to nervous breakdown. The term, violence, has undergone another transformation. It has come to be used in place of terms such as "vice." This shift has occurred not only at the semantic level, but also at the level of value. Violence used to be viewed as behavior which is physically injurious which, though regrettable, might at times be necessary as in self-pro¬ tection or in defense of dignity and freedom. Now violent behavior has come to be viewed as inherently and totally bad, as evil, as taboo. This shift has contributed to a weakening of the taboos tradi¬ tionally placed on deviant forms of behavior which do not involve violence. For example, virtually all forms of sexual activity are now considered acceptable as long as they do not involve physical acts of violence or children. We are urged to think that any resort to vio¬ lence should be unthinkable. This trend has culminated in the legal tabooing - the attempt to legislate "zero tolerance" for violence. Extraordinary episodes of predatory violent crime are being sensa¬ tionalized and used to impress on the public's mind the viability of the notion of zero tolerance. Incidents such as the random shootings at schools also tend to play into this theme of pathlogizing any expression of violent aggression. This sensationalizing and preoccu¬ pation with such malignant forms of violent aggression serve to pro¬ mote the false message that other forms of violent behavior are also increasing in society; they also serve to distract attention away from other serious threats to society and from the fact that this form of aggression may be a response to camouflaged forms of aggression perpetrated by the social order. Placing absolute taboos on a vital bio-physical drive largely rep¬ resenting the confrontational mode tilts the modal balance of aggres¬ sion in favor of non-confrontational methods and paves the way for camouflaged aggression and institutional domination. The notion of zero tolerance for "violence" can be harmful to mental and political health, and detrimental to the ultimate management of aggression within society.

2. Confrontation is a manifestation of violence When violent aggression is viewed as though it were the only form of injurious behavior and as an irrational, uncivilized and unthinkable option — confrontation, which is frequently a concomi¬ tant of violent aggression, comes to be viewed in the same way. Thus the term confrontation becomes equated with belligerence, intransi-

Socio-cultural Factors in Camouflaged Aggression 115

gence, danger and irrationality. With equal complacency, this ideol¬ ogy exalts the virtues of compromise, negotiation, tolerance, prag¬ matism and an unconditional commitment to conflict resolution. The virtues that may be associated with a confrontational strategy, such as the speedy identification of the problem, the confinement of conflict to the parties concerned, the appeal to explicit rules and principles, and the quest for radical solutions, are downplayed or ignored. The attitudes and notions that are deprecating of confrontation tend to be items in the ideological repertoire of individuals who evi¬ dence the conflict avoidant personality (Abdennur, 1987; see chapter five of this book). That such a personality style has become normatively idealized is symptomatic of the fact that unconditional com¬ promise and avoidance of conflict have achieved institutional dom¬ inance in North America. The "passive-aggressive" personality disorder has been dropped from the list of personality disorders in the fourth edition (1994) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The question that arises is, does the elimi¬ nation of the "passive-aggressive" disorder represents a recent nor¬ mative acceptance of this form of behavior? Has it become the rule rather than the exception that people are expected to present a placid and civilized front while vehemently applying themselves to harm¬ ing you?

3. Direct retaliation is revenge One of the tenets of the "Anti-Confrontation Ideology" is its repudiation of direct retaliatory action, deprecatingly labeled as "revenge." However, retaliating in an explicit, direct and personal manner against an individual who has injured you can have many redeeming social benefits. The most important organizational bene¬ fits of confrontational retaliation are that 1) it brings the conflict into the open, 2) it speeds up conflict resolution, 3) it confines aggression to the two parties involved, thus preventing its displacement throughout the organization and 4) it makes a moral statement. When the injury involves behavior that violates a principle or an eth¬ ical code, then open retaliation enables a vindication of that princi¬ ple. Retributive vengeance may be regarded as morally inferior to a Christian response of "turning the other cheek," which is a reaction

116 Camouflaged Aggression

that attempts to substitute love for anger. However, such a response is a rare occurrence in an organization, and most of those who repu¬ diate open revenge do not "turn the other cheek," but turn their head, to see if they can find some way to obtain revenge. Recent empirical evidence reviewed by Bies, Tripp and Kramer (1997) sup¬ ports a functional view of revenge in organizations. In cases when the victim retaliated directly against the aggressor, revenge tended to have constructive and pro-social implications. Private confronta¬ tions tended to be followed by forgiveness and explicit acts of revenge tended to deter the harm-doer in the future. Thus, it is important to stress the distinction between direct retaliatory or confrontational revenge and "getting even" revenge. Confrontational revenge should be viewed as an important and informal social control mechanism which can further orient the revenge reaction toward more formal and legalistic control proce¬ dures. On the other hand, the "getting even" revenge is a destructive approach that deserves our moral contempt. The normative accept¬ ance of the latter strategy is highly ingrained in contemporary orga¬ nizational culture and guided by the slogan: "don't get angry; get even." The "getting even" approach is often one that avoids direct confrontation with the aggressor and one that implicates the organ¬ izations' structures in a more protracted process of retaliation involving a great deal of waiting and stalking and an eventual dis¬ placement of aggression in a camouflaged form.

4. Deceit is smart Another aspect of the decreasing acceptability of confrontation is the tendency to equate deception and manipulation with intelli¬ gence, mental superiority or smartness. This notion appears to be reinforced by the perception of the victim of deception as stupid. It has come to be considered axiomatic that the ability for deceit and artifice is a necessary skill for achieving and holding a public office or a successful legal career, and a factor that is essential for states¬ manship. The presence of this notion in the mind of a bureaucrat can become dangerous as it encourages the spread of manipulativeness in the organization. The equation of deceit with smartness tends to flatter the narcissism of the perpetrator as it is linked to the charac¬ teristics of successful and great individuals. As the growing endorsement of manipulativeness has spread to society at large, cit¬ izens have come to believe that they must acquire skill in interper-

Socio-cultural Factors in Camouflaged Aggression 117

sonal manipulation in order to not feel at risk of being victimized or made to appear stupid by those who are more "socially skilled." Deception and manipulation have become a valued and even essential interpersonal skill. They have been elevated to an art in which people compete. But it is a skill that does not belong to the domain of higher intellectual and scientific thinking and is likely to be inversely correlated with genuine and creative accomplishments in the sciences. The rudimentary forms of deceit, such as those of false representation, are common among most living species. The following example was cited by Rue (1994). The courtship behavior of the male hanging fly involves bringing a gift of food to the female, which she eats as the male copulates with her. Some males of the species dupe other males by mimicking female courtship behavior. When the gift-bearing male arrives, the impersonator snatches the food away and eats it. According to Rue (1994) it is more appropriate from an evolu¬ tionary perspective to ask not how does camouflage and mimicry resemble lying and pretending in humans, but rather to ask how does the intentional act of lying and pretending represent instances of camouflage and mimicry. He believes that it is time we quit think¬ ing of deception as a characteristic exclusive to human interactions. The mastery of rudimentary forms of interpersonal deception by individuals with a low level of intelligence testifies to the instinctu¬ al basis of deceit. The ingenuity of the psychopath's deceitfulness appears to be related to his/her ability for spontaneous tuning to the instinctual bases of deception. Higher education and training in sci¬ entific fields tend to thwart the freedom from objectivity that is required for effective deceit. Freud once complained that his rigor¬ ous analytic interests in psychological phenomena rendered him unable to lie. In short, anyone may employ deception, but the long¬ term success of an organizational career or position cannot depend on manipulation. Objective analysis and confrontation must replace manipulation and deception within public organizations. Conniving needs to be replaced by convincing. Convincing is an intellectual skill which can result in long term changing of others' attitudes, whereas conniving can only yield brief success often followed by the eventual detection and the subsequent hostility of the victim. Managers who are capa¬ ble of being objective, analytical and forthright have no need for manipulation.

118 Camouflaged Aggression

5. Pseudo-confrontation The essential and ideal characteristics of the confrontational position are a comprehensive and objective awareness of the issue and its direct communication with the responsible party. There are many ways an attitude or an issue can be expressed. The context and the personal and cultural norms tend to shape the style of expres¬ sion, but confrontation is not the mere style of delivery. The mode of delivery is what most significantly qualifies the action. For example, interpersonal directness, belligerent assertiveness and a challenging style can be used to avoid focussing and dealing with the central issue. This pseudo-confrontational approach can give the impres¬ sion of frankness and straightforwardness ("calling a spade a spade") while in reality it merely expresses a non-confrontational strategy in the guise of confrontation. Similarly, exhibitionistic state¬ ments that explicitly describe private affairs or divulge personal information about the speaker are used by him to give the impres¬ sion of frankness and objectivity. It is thus possible to confront the person without ever confronting the issue. It is also possible (and increasingly common) to confront the person to achieve the avoid¬ ance of the issue. Assertion and confrontation are not the same thing. Assertiveness, as taught in innumerable social skills training cours¬ es (e.g., Lange & Jakubowski, 1978) focuses on the clear, direct and open expression of feelings, attitudes and points of view by an indi¬ vidual in interpersonal situations. Because the focus is on individu¬ als learning to identify and express their feelings and perspectives (albeit with respect for those of others), assertiveness is often only self-serving. It may also fail to take into consideration broader prin¬ ciples or values or to do justice to the real issue at hand. Assertiveness training by itself may promote egocentrism and, as such, may represent a threat to healthy social interaction. The confrontation strategy which is essential to successful social organization may sometimes require assertive behavior in the sense of a expressing a clear statement of one's feelings and position on the issue in question in a manner which takes into consideration the rights of others to be treated fairly. However, adequate confronta¬ tion requires more than a mere open expression of one's feelings and views. Assertiveness may only serve to get people to relate to anoth¬ er person better for a while as they both lose sight of the issue that set them apart. It may improve communication, but it may fail to deal with the problem because it focuses on the personal relation-

Socio-cultural Factors in Camouflaged Aggression 119

ship and not on the broader social or ethical issue. Style of expres¬ sion is important but it is not enough. Confrontation requires clear identification and communication of the issue. Thus a shy or a modest expressive style can be highly confrontational if the individual zeros properly on the issue and directs it to the right party. Assertiveness is neither necessary nor sufficient for confrontation.

6. The institutionalization of hypocrisy by neutralizing conflict A conflict between two individuals has two central components: a) the existence of two opposed sets of intentions or views, and b) the conscious and the affective expressions of this opposition. Organizations, by means of structural and normative operations, can make possible the isolation of these two components so that the aggressive activity of conflict is expressed independently of its affec¬ tive manifestations. For example, two employees may be actively engaged in camouflaged aggression against each other and, at the same time, manage to carry out a placid and cordial "civilized" interaction that suppresses or neutralizes the public sentiments of opposition. Behind the scenes, the two protagonists may be engaged in elaborate plots and intrigues to undermine and block each other, however, at the interactive level, they may salute, smile and join the group for coffee, where they may also crack jokes in front of each other and quote each other's anecdotes. In an effort to neutralize the manifest affective components of conflict, the modern organization institutionalizes an etiquette of hypocrisy that is socially costly. Conflicts no longer unfold and get resolved consciously, but linger insidiously, depriving the organiza¬ tion from the benefits of confrontational (dialectical) resolutions of conflict. When there exists a power differential between the two employ¬ ees, with the less powerful one being the victim, a new dynamic sur¬ faces. The strong perpetrator can use this institutionalized conflict neutralization etiquette to neutralize the victim's retaliatory reac¬ tions without the perpetrator having to give up his harming of vic¬ tim. This relationship in fact amounts to a psychological disarming of the victim. In this disarmed state, the victim endures suffering from two sources: a) from the perpetuation of the injurious actions, and b)

120 Camouflaged Aggression

from the frustration of his need to retaliate and this eventually redi¬ rects his anger against his own self.

7. The non-confrontational values of the “minimal self” The concept of the "minimal self" was proposed by Christopher Lasch (1984) to describe a constricted experience of the self and seek¬ ing survival as an end in itself. Survival in modern society is often valued unconditionally without any regard to its quality. Notions that promote extending life through medical technology regardless of the quality of life, pronouncements such as: "I am just trying to survive..." or "trying to earn a living" are examples of evaluations that point to survival as the ultimate purpose. Contemporary move¬ ments that espouse that "nothing is worth dying for" tend to endorse the consequent notion that "nothing is worth living for." Even though world peace becomes more desirable than ever before in the nuclear age, according to Feher and Heller (1982; quoted by Lasch, 1984) "there is still a contradiction between a good life and a mere life"... "violence and wars cannot be entirely eliminated from our actions if we seek something more than survival." The Darwinian notion of survival as the driving force and ultimate pur¬ pose of life is not only minimalist, it is also regressive since it undermines the active role humans have in challenging and trans¬ forming their social environment and in deciding what kind of life is worth living. Survivalism is also morally nihilistic since, given its assumptions, there is no cause or person that should not be sacri¬ ficed or betrayed to stay alive. An expression of the minimal experience of the self is paranoid thinking. This thinking stems from feelings of helplessness and impotence that minimize confrontational strategies and restrict them to defense. Another expression of this minimal state of self can be observed in the popular rush to be seen as a victim. The social and political rhetoric that extol the moral superiority of "victims" tend to mask the aggressive, vindictive, greedy and ambitious aims of many of the "victimized." The values of the minimal self can be better depicted by con¬ trasting them with the traditional confrontational values emanating from an expansive, conditional and determining self. The following story narrated by the celebrated Lebanese folk writer, Salam Rassy (1976), illustrates the traditional contrasting values. During the early 60s, he went to a mountainous village, "Shibaa," in the south of Lebanon to look for an individual whom he had previously hired for

Socio-cultural Factors in Camouflaged Aggression 121 some work. After inquiring about the worker's house and locating it, he knocked on the door. A young man opened and reciprocated my greeting. I asked him whether the man I was looking for was in. He replied, "What do you need from him?" Then the voice of an old man thundered from inside the house: " Mahmoud: if you know where your brother is, say where he is...we are not in the habit of hiding our men." He went on to say, "You cannot hide a javelin in a sack." A javelin is usually too long to be covered by a sack. Even if it can be covered, the javelin will pierce the sack, thus making its con¬ cealment difficult. But most contemporary bureaucrats can easily be hidden in organizational sacks; they are conveniently curved and lack any piercing or thrusting capacity. Individuals who walk tall and who have views and who can express them directly and with¬ out resort to a victim role are becoming a rare breed. In contrast, con¬ flict avoiders, survivalists and various kinds of minimalists, who can be easily deployed, easily displayed and easily hidden, are domi¬ nating the cultural scene.

CHAPTER VII Prevention and Control of Camouflaged Aggression

A need to express aggression is an inevitable consequence of the interpersonal conflicts that occur in human interactions, particularly in complex social organizations. Aggression is an intricate and cru¬ cial part of the biological and social evolution of human society. Aggression can be functional or dysfunctional, depending on the goals it is intended to serve and its costs in human terms. Aggression is not inherently bad. Like anger, it is natural. Whether it is good or bad depends on how, where, when and why it is expressed. The challenge of reducing aggression lies in two strategies: a) reducing its causes, such as deprivation, injustice, over¬ crowding, stress and disorganization b) controlling and managing its expression in ways which min¬ imize the damage it can cause and maximize the social ben¬ efits it can yield. Neither of those goals can be achieved by approaches that are limited to the control and suppression of direct and confrontational aggression. Their achievement also requires controlling the expres¬ sion of camouflaged aggression, since the expression of camou¬ flaged aggression increases the quantum of aggression in an organ¬ ization and tolerance of camouflaged aggression adds to those social conditions (injustice, stress, etc.) that cause aggression.

Balancing the Two Modes: In a stable organization, aggression is self-containing and self¬ minimizing when avenues and dispositions for the expression of the two modes are actively available. When the expression of aggression is unevenly confined to one mode, then the imbalance will likely lead to increased spread and increased accumulation of aggression. In contemporary organizations, non-confrontational avenues are nearly always available; it is the confrontational ones that are often curtailed. Therefore, intervention should mainly seek to increase the opportunities for confrontation.

223

124 Camouflaged Aggression

An attempt to reduce aggression should not aim at the total eradication of either confrontational or camouflaged aggression. Neither is possible. Such a goal is neither realistic nor desirable. Aggression is inevitable. What should be sought is not their elimi¬ nation, but their management and control. What should be sought is a synthesis of the two; a balance that insures maximum organiza¬ tional health. Many, perhaps most modern organizations have sought only to control confrontation, while camouflaged aggression has remained unchecked. Intervention must seek to rectify the imbalance. Accordingly, what is required is not only a reduction in camou¬ flaged aggression, but an increase in confrontation. Intervention needs to take place at two main levels: 1. ideological - recognition by management of the phenome¬ non of camouflaged aggression, its prevalence and its effects; analysis of the organization's approaches to the man¬ agement of conflict; critical questioning of explicit and implicit values and notions held by the organization vis-avis the expression of aggression. 2. practical - adoption by management of an integrated and explicit value position vis-a-vis expression of aggression; introduction of new managerial policies and practices to support the value position; re-education throughout the organization; implementation of specific intervention strate¬ gies.

Balancing the Two Modes at the Ideological Level Rather than proposing structural changes or some form of sanc¬ tioning or rewards as might be used in a human engineering or behavioral approach to social control, I am proposing a cognitive approach. The cognitive approach gives precedence to the adequacy of comprehending the situation. The use of adequate concepts and constructs, together with their integration into an abstract and meaningful perspective, would adequately orient and guide behav¬ ior. An abstract integrated perspective is self-monitoring, self-critical and self-correcting; it is continuous, spontaneous and generalizable, requiring little detailed or situation-specific prescriptions. Managers must make clear to the employees their position regarding the potentially destructive and regressive consequences of

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 125

camouflaged aggression. However, before doing so, managers must adopt such a position. They must learn to identify the phenomenon in all its manifestations and recognize its potential for damage both to the organization and the individuals in that organization (includ¬ ing the managers themselves). Such an undertaking requires that the managers take an objec¬ tive, penetrating and critical look at all of the roles and functions in their organization and their own managerial practices to identify the structural and personality factors that stimulate, camouflage and contain aggression. It also requires that the manager critically assess his or her perception as to whether aggression is an evil and destruc¬ tive force which should be stamped out as a sign of organizational or personal frailty or pathology, or, rather, a natural and instrumen¬ tal human drive which, if expressed in a healthy confrontational way, can enable the organization and its members to flourish. Unless managers come to adopt the latter position, they are unlikely to be effective in contributing to the reduction of camouflaged aggression in their organizations. Managers must then actively and explicitly debunk notions (their own and others) that contribute to the positive sanctioning of camouflaged aggression. The notions that need to be challenged are those that either explicitly or implicitly label confrontational strate¬ gies as negative. Managers must communicate the position that con¬ frontation need not be bad and that it is certainly healthier and more honorable than, for example, a "getting even" strategy. The notion that manipulation is a manifestation of intelligence must be debunked. Notions that mistakenly equate confrontation with bel¬ ligerence must also be challenged. As was pointed out in chapter six, confrontation is not only about expressing one's emotions so that one's personal feelings are understood; it is about expressing one's thoughts so that one's views on the issue at stake are expressed and problems are understood. It is equally important that the intervention strategy seek to cul¬ tivate and appeal to the sense of self-respect and honor of each of the members of the organization. A sense of honor can be the most effec¬ tive policing agency. Management must create the belief that deceit, manipulation and treachery are not honorable. Then when faced with behaving in a way that individuals consider demeaning or beneath their self-worth, they will restrain themselves. The restrain¬ ing power of honor becomes diminished when it is perceived and experienced as the maintenance and defense of a public image.

126 Camouflaged Aggression

When the sense of honor is predominantly experienced externally rather than internally, then, as in the case of the bureaucratization of anger, it becomes alienated. The alienated honor (vanity) maintains a monitoring function only at the public level of behavior. At the internal level, vanity fails to promote the sense of truthfulness and decency that honor commands, and further tends to employ decep¬ tion and manipulation in service of public image. Another constric¬ tion in sense of honor results when employees are treated or come to see themselves as minimal entities concerned only with survival. The survivalist perspective undermines self-worth and inner selfdirection and thus the pro-organizational behavior of employees becomes contingent only on external restraints. Well-guided strategies for achieving effective management of aggression in organizations are those that adhere to the following basic tenet:

Confrontation IS the ideal Strategy After pointing out distortions and biases in the understanding of confrontation, managers or trainers must exalt the benefits of con¬ frontation properly conceptualized. The confrontation strategy should be seen as the most active and the ultimate goal in the evo¬ lution of forms for the delivery of aggression. Confrontation must be seen as a transcendence over forms of evasion and camouflage. Managers and organizational members alike must come to rec¬ ognize that the confrontational expression of aggression is necessary for the establishment of secure and stable social settings, and has been since humans began to form social bonds. The managers and members must be taught what a confronta¬ tion strategy actually involves. Thus, they need to understand and appreciate that objectivity is the most fundamental tenet of con¬ frontation; it is also the most essential condition for justice. Conflicting parties need to face each other and the issue in conflict in an objective manner rather than avoiding each other and engaging in distortion of the issue. They must be helped to examine the assumptions they have which may be at the root of the conflict; thoroughly analyze the conflict from different viewpoints; seek a com¬ prehensive view which takes into account all aspects of the situation. They must seek comprehension before they seek solutions. They thereby can confront the issues rather than avoid them, and they can confront the issues and not only each other.

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 127

Such an analytical and comprehensive approach promotes abstract thinking and moral reasoning such that individuals move beyond a search for egocentric and self-serving solutions to a search for solutions which are based on fundamental principles, ideas and pro-social values. Such an approach fosters pro-activeness as opposed to reactiveness and is likely to yield the transformation of one's environment rather than a mere adaptation to it. Many years ago psychologist Kurt Goldstein (1940) concluded, on basis of his studies of the effects of brain damage on human func¬ tioning, that abstraction (comprehensiveness) and an active (con¬ frontational) approach to reality are the most reliable indicators of mental health. Too often in conflict situations people are advised to make the nature of the conflict concrete so that it can be dealt with in concrete and segmented ways. I believe that concretizing conflict often serves only to eliminate the conflict and does little to achieve an elimination of the source of the conflict. The latter requires abstracting. Abstraction which yields a comprehensive view of the conflict is the underpinning of a healthy approach to reorganization and pro-active intervention. Non-confrontational behavior (conflict avoidance) has been shown to be associated at the cognitive level with concreteness and a segmented approach to issues (Abdennur, 1987). The manager should also explain how confrontation can lead to rapid resolution of conflict and how a non-confrontational and cam¬ ouflaged approach to conflict is ultimately problematic because it results in the protracting, displacing and augmenting of aggression. Without adequate confrontation, those who preach the gospel of conflict resolution may occupy seats at the bargaining table for a long time before the matters which really should be at hand are dealt with. The cultivation of confrontational methods as an intellectual approach, as an ethic, as a practical strategy and ultimately, as char¬ acter, is the most viable approach to conflicts within the organiza¬ tion.

Balancing the Two Modes at the Practical Level Any practical decision that is taken with the explicit intention to unmask and discourage camouflaged aggression will communicate to the organization's members a symbolic and value-related mes¬ sage that is essential to enable the manager to mobilize collective

128 Camouflaged Aggression

attitudes against this type of behavior. Effective intervention requires a clearly expressed commitment to values and a commit¬ ment to base policies and procedures on these values. However, this does not mean that intervention against camouflaged aggression should attempt to achieve its total elimination - that is simply not possible. Rather, intervention should seek to a) unmask camou¬ flaged aggression and assist members to understand its effects, with the goal of minimizing and containing it, and b) introduce and rein¬ force avenues for confrontation and encourage its maximal appro¬ priate application. The following steps provide a breakdown of the recommended intervention strategy. In keeping with the cognitive approach, the stress here is on the proper identification and conceptualization of processes. Thus the identification of behavior, victim, injury and perpetrator presented below are introduced from a cognitive rather than an inquisitorial or litigational perspective. A perpetrator may well be a victim of camouflaged aggression who is reciprocating in kind. The main goal of the recommended strategy is to allow mem¬ bers of the organization to critically confront their camouflaged mode of behavior and then to confront each other in a courteous manner that can lead to conflict resolution and reconciliation. Specific recommendations are avoided because they will vary from organization to organization and because incumbents can deal with them creatively when the total cognitive picture is clear.

1. Identification of the behavior The first step in combating camouflaged aggression is to recog¬ nize it. This requires the clear identification of the behavior and its purpose. That is, the behavior should be diagnosed as an aggressive action aimed at causing harm. Whether the intention is unconscious or whether the act has become routine, or whether it is instrumental for a practical end, it should still be considered an act of aggression. Camouflaged aggression is also independent of the status of its intended victim. Its target may be an individual victim or the group, the agency or the ethnicity the victim represents. Injurious behavior stemming from pure accident or from incompetence should not nor¬ mally be designated as aggression. However, feigned incompetence may well be a form of camouflaged aggression. Thus, the clear and explicit depiction of suspect behaviors is the most fundamental step in combating camouflaged aggression. This

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 129

identification requires a clear conceptual understanding of camou¬ flaged aggression and its dynamics.

2. Labeling of behavior Attaching an appropriate and catchy term or label to a particu¬ lar form of camouflaged aggression can speed up recognizing it. When such negative labels are publicly used, they may serve to deter people against committing the behavior. Furthermore, assign¬ ing well-chosen labels can facilitate their being viewed as antisocial and lead to their incorporation into administrative sanctions. Moreover, such identification may also serve to encourage victims to challenge the behavior. The term camouflaged aggression itself fulfils both conditions. The term identifies the behavior in question as masked and hidden, and connotes ethological links to earlier and lower species. The concept of mode in aggression, together with confrontational mode, non-confrontational mode and mode imbalance, has a heuristic labeling value. Equally useful are the quantum of aggression and resonance of aggres¬ sion within the organization. Becoming a recipient of camouflaged aggression as a result of situational vulnerability can be referred to as hydraulic victimization. Position vulnerability refers to the point of low resistance. The term malignant aggression, which refers to aggression generated by the need for the release of tension through some convenient situation or person, is a useful construct that can be communicated by analogy to cancer. Organizational foliage refers to the intricate structures behind which aggressors seek camouflage and which gives rise to a need to flush them out into the clearing of personal responsibility. The following are some examples of other labels that can be employed: For someone who uses the common technique of with¬ drawing attention or affection by shifting unpredictably between warmth and coolness, the term yo-yoing may be applied; for engag¬ ing in anxiety-provoking practices - carpet pulling; for rationalizing a personally-motivated decision in terms of organizational needs and restrictions - decision laundering; for the dissemination of harmful information - dusting. A glossary of the concepts and labels intro¬ duced in this book follows this chapter

130 Camouflaged Aggression

3. Identification of the victim Victims of camouflaged aggression may not be able to identify various forms of camouflaged aggression as aggressive and may misattribute the distress the behavior leads them to experience to other sources, including personal ones. Sometimes the organization, as a whole, is blamed for the distress; at other times the victim shoul¬ ders the blame - "It is my fault, I should have. ..." Sometimes the victim simply blames happenstance or bad luck. Identification of the victim is also an important phase in com¬ bating camouflaged aggression. Prompt victim identification will mobilize the intended victim's defenses and may provoke guilt or intimidation in the aggressor which, in both cases, may serve as a deterrent. Victimization in camouflaged aggression is not confined to the direct recipients of such aggression. Because of the chains of struc¬ tured interaction in organizations and the tendency to displace aggression, non-immediate individuals and even individuals out¬ side of the organization may be victimized. The organization itself may be the victim. A comprehensive view of victimization requires going well beyond an individual vic¬ tim perspective. The increasingly prevalent perspective of social atomism in North America has lead to a view of society as the sum of independent individuals. The notion of "victimless crime" is an example of the potential harm of social atomism. Crimes committed with consent (e.g., drug use, prostitution), according to this perspec¬ tive, should be considered as victimless. However, even though the perpetrators may appear only to be harming themselves, their actions may ultimately be harmful to society; the individual may feel entitled to his or her suffering, but society may become the victim of their self-indulgence, not only because of the social costs involved in providing services for them, but also because their behavior is trans¬ mitted to others through modeling and from the change in social values which is engendered through the social acceptance of their behavior. Society should be also included as a possible victim, and the damage against the organization and society at large in terms of undermining social trust and normative integration should be assessed. In order to acknowledge and assess social damage, a level of cognitive training in basic abstract and social reasoning may be required. Abstract and integrative thinking counterbalances the

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 131

harmful implications of extreme individualism and brings forward the awareness that society, similar to an organization, is an allencompassing and omnipresent entity capable of being influenced by and of influencing individual behavior. The health of society is contingent on the health of its organizations and on the quality of interaction within them. Accordingly, the rights of society need to be at the forefront of any intervention dealing with victimization. Any preoccupation with the rights of victims that does not take into con¬ sideration the rights of society cannot adequately serve either the rights of individuals nor the rights of society. Only special interest groups are served by an exclusive preoccupation with the rights of individual victims.

4. Identification of injury Following the identification of the victim, an accurate assess¬ ment of injury becomes necessary. A general classification of the types of possible injury allows for the development of more com¬ prehensive classification for the assessment of both personal and social damage incurred. Three major domains of injury can be dis¬ tinguished:

a) Injury sustained by the individual This includes: direct physical damage to the body; physical dam¬ age due to stress and emotional distress; psychological suffering; deterioration in mental health such as increased emotional vulnera¬ bility and decline in cognitive powers; and financial loss. Also included is injury sustained to one's sense of honor, dignity, self¬ esteem and reputation.

b) Injury sustained by the organization This includes: absenteeism, vandalism, work sabotage, decreased efficiency and productivity, an increase in the quantum of aggression, demoralization and decline in the quality of interper¬ sonal relationships, decline in reputation and in profits.

c) Injury sustained by society This involves the weakening of the public trust and allegiance to social institutions; demoralization and apathy in interpersonal rela¬ tionships; defensive, paranoid withdrawals among people and self-

132 Camouflaged Aggression

centeredness; loss of commitment to moral values and subsequent decline in social cohesion.

5. Identification of the perpetrator The identification of the perpetrator and laying responsibility is the final step in the identification part of the intervention process. The fact that an employee may be engaging in camouflaged aggres¬ sion for the purpose of self protection, or as a retaliation in kind to being victimized, would still make him/her a perpetrator. Perpetrators are often shielded from detection behind organization¬ al foliage. Their detection requires an organizational commitment to fully investigate the sources of friction among its members and a refusal to be beguiled by deception. It also requires an administra¬ tive resolve to make employees responsible for their behavior. After pinning down the perpetrator, the manager may also need to confront and neutralize the perpetrator's repertoire of rationaliza¬ tions which present the camouflaged aggression as an unavoidable product of office operations or as dictated by the interests of the organization. This form of rationalization, which I refer to as decision laundering, should not be allowed to "wash" within the work setting. Only after these identifications and unmaskings are made should the manager proceed to reconciliatory interventions among the con¬ flicting parties. The explicit intervention by management against acts of camou¬ flaged aggression will gradually create a group dynamic among staff that will spontaneously identify perpetrators and deter them at the same time. Moreover, by adopting a comprehensive conceptual¬ ization of aggression and victimization, the organization will mobi¬ lize analytical and critical thinking on how to respond to and deter camouflaged aggression.

6. Reduce learning and transmission of camouflaged aggression Camouflaged aggression can be learned and transmitted through interpersonal interactions wherein an individual learns from others the techniques of carrying out the behavior, together with rationalizations and norms that legitimate its employment. Key educators in this learning process are often senior ranking adminis¬ trators, who employ camouflaged aggression with a sense of com¬ placency and pride and thereby serve as models for emulation.

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 133

In many organizations those most accomplished in camouflaged aggression often rise to the top, where their interpersonal style is emulated by those who aspire to their positions. Many are very diplomatic individuals who seem to "get along" well with others and are able to reduce friction within the organization because they always are able to "smooth things over." Such individuals must be identified and upper management should contemplate radical measures, such as terminating their incumbency. When their removal is not feasible, an open challenge to their style should be undertaken. Administrators are often propelled by a narcissistic need to recruit personnel who resemble them in major styles and orienta¬ tions. Thus, one intervention strategy would be to not allow these "educators" to hire their own staff in order to prevent the "selfduplication" process. Another strategy would be to bring in, as their main assistants, individuals with strong, established personalities who have a confrontational, open style. These procedures may slow down the learning process.

7. Discourage the hidden agenda A common strategy during meetings is for individuals to mask their true positions, either by expressing a different position or by expressing no position at all. This strategy is often justified by the fact that the individuals in the group have different interests. However, it is often applied even when there are no significant dif¬ ferences among individuals, and the strategy can be the result of an established habit, with implicit notions defining manipulation as a manifestation of superior intelligence. In fact, even when there are differences in vested interest, the hidden agenda strategy may still prove to be counter productive for all or most parties. The hidden agenda strategy invites manipulation, protracts conflicts, promotes suspicions and paranoia, and thwarts creative thinking, which thrives on authenticity and objectivity. Managers should explicitly proclaim their rejection of masked or unarticulated agendas in meetings. It is remarkable how quickly and enthusiastically members will adopt an anti-hidden agenda policy and become vigilant in watching for and drawing attention to breaches of this policy. The anti-hidden agenda policy also requires the adoption of a policy that promotes the objective presentation of all positions and the recourse to frank discussion.

234 Camouflaged Aggression

8. Ensure smooth management It is rather self evident that inadequate management will result in the poor allocation of duties and subsequent inadequate perform¬ ance, confusion, conflicts and resultant frustrations that lead to aggression. There are other organizational factors besides failures in management that can contribute to aggression, such as dissatisfac¬ tion, work stress, contempt for higher management, jealousies . . . and external stressors. The main point is that any source of aggres¬ sion within an organization, if allowed to continue, will eventually generate camouflaged aggression. Thus a source of aggression with¬ in an organization becomes analogous to the pre-cancerous growth in the human body which, if left unattended, will turn malignant. It may be important at this point to stress an often neglected dimension in management, namely, cognitive-epistemological style. In certain positions, having the necessary technical and interperson¬ al skills may not be sufficient. The epistemological style of an admin¬ istrator must also be compatible with the demands of the position if a harmonious and effective incumbency is to ensue. In the psychoepistemological literature, epistemological styles are conceptualized as the stable preferences or habitual strategies of information access¬ ing and processing an individual utilizes; they are distinct from the content of subject matter and from the level of skill displayed in per¬ formance. Three basic epistemological styles have been identified and researched (e.g., Royce, 1973; Rancourt, 1988): the Empirical, which focuses on sensory and external discrete data, and relies mainly on inductive reasoning; the Rational, which focuses on con¬ ceptual, theoretical, ideational processes, and on deduction; and the Intuitive-metaphorical, which relies on self-referent, symbolic and direct-holistic forms of comprehension. The reliance on one episte¬ mological style more than others influences the individual's organi¬ zation of information and the subsequent approach to problems and issues. The negative impact of incompatible epistemological styles can be experienced in such places as research divisions dealing with social problems and services. Senior research administrators educat¬ ed in various fields of the social and behavioral sciences are expect¬ ed to demonstrate an openness toward both empirical and theoreti¬ cal research approaches; for both micro and for macro models; and for data-driven or inductively-established relationships and for deductively-established ones. Expertise in and preference for one approach need not preclude the appreciation of the importance and

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 135

usefulness of the other. Stylistic-based conflict arises when a research director is "encapsulated" (Royce's term, 1964) into one style and seeks to undermine and exclude research and researchers oriented toward other styles. The most typical conflict is between representatives of the empirical-pragmatic and the rational style approaches, with the latter often being the victims on the Canadian scene. I have had work-related experiences with several Canadian and foreign research units. The only research departments employing the social sciences where I encountered directors who were aggres¬ sively and self-complacently anti-theoretical were in Canadian Federal research departments. Militant and rampant pragmatism boils down into an anti-intellectual "ideology" that intimidates cre¬ ative thinking and undermines the contribution of the social sciences to social policy. Anti-intellectualism should have no place in research departments dealing with social issues; it is an insult to aca¬ demic research and to social sciences. Managing stylistic conflicts and the ensuing camouflaged aggression is best achieved by having researchers recognize their different epistemological styles and the impact of these styles on thinking and research orientations.

9. Internal vs. external management In the competitive world of business, corporations may believe (not unrealistically) that their success is dependent on their ability to maneuvre, manipulate and misrepresent and that failure to do so will put them at considerable disadvantage relative to their com¬ petitors. It is not my intention to delve into the ethics of business practices. This has recently become a focus of considerable interest, at least in North America, stimulated by those who argue that busi¬ nesses that operate in accordance with ethical principles can be just as successful or more successful than those which follow a more pragmatic approach without consideration of moral issues. In the global village, the deeds of a company catch up with it rather quick¬ ly. A company may succeed only in cutting themselves permanent¬ ly from contracts after news of a "fast one" spreads even before it reaps its spoils. An honorable style of conducting business may have its rewards. Whether or not manipulative business practices are judged to be required in an organization's interaction with their clients and their competition, such practices should be strictly avoided in the organi¬ zation's interaction with its own members. However, organizations

236 Camouflaged Aggression

will find it very difficult to separate their internal and the external modus operandi. Manipulativeness corrupts and spreads. The Machiavellian tactics of a senior director in his dealings with his competitors may be extended to his management of his employees.

Intervention Focusing on Abnormal Personality Functioning The personality of directors, managers and members is one of the key factors in the generation and augmentation of camouflaged aggression. Intervention must take into consideration abnormal per¬ sonality features and their impact.

Neurotic Disorders Neurotic traits such as compulsive orderliness and workaholism can generate tension, frustration and grudges in those who must interact with such individuals. Some neurotic individuals are moti¬ vated towards self-improvement and, through counseling, can be made sensitive to their shortcomings. In many cases, however, inter¬ vention must also include measures to identify such neurotic indi¬ viduals and then to protect them from their vulnerabilities. One of their most common vulnerabilities is a high level of anxiety that can be easily provoked or augmented by managerial practices. Self¬ esteem is tied to a sense of security and is highly affected by anxiety. Thus, adequate management would not allow individuals with such neurotic vulnerability to work under highly insensitive or nonempathetic managers and particularly managers with passiveaggressive personality disorder, who tend to prey on anxiety-vul¬ nerable employees. Anxiety and low self-esteem can combine to generate camou¬ flaged aggression in managers who are promoted to positions with increased powers and privileges; promotions of which they may feel unworthy; positions in which they feel insecure. The Peter Principle proposes that an individual can be promoted to the level of his incompetence. A psychological version of the Peter Principle would suggest that an individual can be promoted to his level of insecuri¬ ty. The anxiety experienced by such new incumbents often causes them to attack subordinates in arbitrary, arrogant or, more likely, in conspiratorial ways.

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 137

A common passive-aggressive technique used by neurotics is affect withdrawal. Some individuals who may have been, in their early life, subjected to affect withdrawal as a form of control, devel¬ op a vulnerability to withdrawal which they try to overcome by using it on others. These individuals indulge others with "tender¬ ness and love," only to withdraw their investment by means of cool¬ ness, indifference and avoidance. This technique of camouflaged aggression, which was discussed in chapter four, fosters generalized feelings of anxiety, depression and paranoia. Confronting perpetra¬ tors with their behavior can be effective in cases where the passiveaggression is neurotically based. A subtle form of camouflaged aggression stems from the neu¬ rotic need for self-punishment, which is often associated with fear of success. The typical overt approach of such an individual is an enthusiastic exertion of effort towards the realization of a viable project. When the prospects of success start to loom, the individual makes decisions that cause the venture to collapse. Their "mistakes" may not be accidental; the individuals may be unconsciously moti¬ vated to fail. In this case, the aggression appears at first glance to be directed solely against the self and to be limited to the individual, particularly in cases where he/she is the sole proprietor of the enter¬ prise. However, closer analysis often reveals that others suffer as a result of the individual's lack of success. Sometimes, the accompa¬ nying victims are close individuals such as family members and business partners. Within organizations, other individuals and the organization as a whole can be victimized. The fact that these indi¬ viduals become victims themselves lessens the feeling of guilt for the suffering of others. Their personal losses mask the behavior as an unintended mistake rather than an act of camouflaged aggression on self, colleagues and organization. It is difficult to spot such individ¬ uals directly; the best indicator is their history, which often reveals a string of such projects. These individuals need to be made aware of the aggressive quality of their behavior and how it makes others, and not just themselves, suffer. A related form of self-injurious behavior is seen in those indi¬ viduals who, with or without awareness, suppress their aggressive impulses against others and turn their aggressiveness against them¬ selves in ways which do not appear to be aggressive but can be self¬ destructive. They behave in a similar manner to the many profes¬ sional golfers who lose their "killer instinct" and "blow" their leads in major tournaments over the final holes by making poor shots or

138 Camouflaged Aggression poor decisions they would not normally be expected to make. As suggested before, the organization provides extensive opportunities for the delivery of such self-directed aggression.

Personality Disorders A general strategy in the case of personality disorders should not be intervention; it should be extinction. When an incumbent is recognized as exhibiting one of the major personality disorders, attempts at removing that individual from the position should fol¬ low with no hesitation or ambivalence. If removing that individual is not feasible, then curtailing his/her sphere of activities becomes the second alternative. Removing the employee who exhibits fea¬ tures (mild, severe or mixed) of a disordered personality from a decision-making capacity and from close and intense interaction with others will reduce their antisocial behavior, however, it may not curtail it. For example, arranging for a passive-aggressive or a paranoid to work alone may not fully solve the problem. They still can deliver and provoke antisocial behavior in a variety of ways, particularly as electronic systems link them to others. A third alter¬ native would be to clearly and explicitly institute punitive measures for any infraction they commit and to carry out such actions consis¬ tently. This strategy may have some impact, particularly with pas¬ sive-aggressive individuals whose aggression appears to be cur¬ tailed under the impact of an explicit threat. Psychopathic individu¬ als can be kept in line at least for some time by means of enforced threats of loss of privileges. It may sometimes be possible to exploit psychopathology in a profitable manner within a specific setting and for a limited time. A psy¬ chopath may do an exceptionally efficient job on a selling consign¬ ment. A narcissist may invest a great deal of energy and effort in a new venture or opening that affords him/her the pursuit of selfaggrandizement. Someone with a histrionic personality disorder may perform superbly in a public relations job for a limited time. A compulsive or avoidant personality may do well on a task that requires seclusion and routine. It is sometimes possible to create a psycho-structural marriage between assigned tasks and the inherently antisocial inclinations of the personality disordered individual. For example, entrusting a passive-aggressive with spying on some employees, or commission¬ ing a paranoid to maintain surveillance on a certain "conspiring" group, or enlisting the services of a psychopathic employee for

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 139

obtaining certain materials through conning, will mobilize them in a quest for excellence. However, problems arise when we attempt to restrain these individuals in order to confine their performance to the profitable side. It is exceedingly difficult to contain or get rid of them after they have done "good" work for you. Their ingenuity at bullying, intimidation, blackmail and mischief is enormous and they end up costing in time, energy and agony more than their contribu¬ tion was worth. The balance sheet of the individual with a serious personality disorder will ultimately never shift in favor of the organ¬ ization. In most cases, personality disorders tend to be chronic and not amenable to ameliorative efforts. Protecting society by improving the quality of organizational behavior is becoming more and more crucial. Accordingly, efforts must be taken by management to mini¬ mize the presence of individuals with disordered personalities in organizations, particularly in public agencies.

Other Intervention Strategies 1. Establishing avenues for refutation Not all harm expressed through the operation of organizations is the result of aggression (deliberate action by individuals for the purpose of harming others). Clients and members of an organization can be harmed as a result of a great number of events and conditions ,both internal and external to the organization. However, due to the complexity of structures and to other psychological factors, victims may attribute aggressive intentions to employees who are innocent. Therefore it becomes equally important to be able to identify the innocence of employees entangled in a harm-causing organizational process. Bies, Tripp and Kramer (1997) describe three prototypic patterns of social perception that contribute to revenge behavior in the work¬ place. The first is a tendency to make personal attributions about the behavior of members, particularly those who occupy higher posi¬ tions. Kramer (1995) demonstrated that individuals tend to make overly personal attributions when they feel self-conscious or under evaluative scrutiny. These personal attributions can motivate retali¬ ation. Two kinds of motives in personal attributions were identified by Bies and Tripp (1995): selfishness and malevolence. A selfish harm-doer causes harm for personal profit. A malevolent harm-doer

140 Camouflaged Aggression

causes harm for the sake of hurting a particular victim. Vindictiveness tends to increase when the latter kind of attribution is made. A second cognitive pattern is the biased punctuation of conflict, which refers to a tendency of individuals to construe the history of conflict with the other party as part of a pattern and pre-calculated design to victimize them. This type of bias contributes to vindictive¬ ness by providing justifications for retaliation and by generating self-fulfilling patterns of action-reaction between the parties. A third perceptual pattern is the exaggerated perception of conspiracy associat¬ ed with paranoid cognitions. Paranoid misperception leads to hyper-vigilance, which, along with personal attribution and biased punctuation of conflict, lead to the over-attribution and over-reac¬ tion to benign organizational exchanges and encounters. Management's understanding of perceptual distortions such as the above will help put blame reactions in perspective, control gen¬ eralized paranoia and facilitate reconciliation between the conflict¬ ing parties. The techniques used by management can vary with the situation and the individual manager. The fundamental strategy of intervention for managing blame and insuring recourses for estab¬ lishing innocence, as in the case of identifying camouflaged aggres¬ sion, is fundamentally a cognitive-educational strategy. This strate¬ gy involves understanding and educating members about the dynamics of camouflaged aggression and about counter productive ways of dealing with it, including the hasty attribution of blame.

2. Understanding bureaucratic intransigence It was proposed in chapter three that the camouflaged blending of the bureaucrat with the organization is motivated by two goals: a) avoiding personal responsibility and b) achieving invincibility. The latter goal, which is highly implicated with intransigence, will be the concern of this section. As the employee identifies with the formal organizational structure, he experiences a lowering in his personal responsibility (vulnerability) and an increase in his sense of power as the result of being part of a larger, more credible and more pow¬ erful entity. That sense of power, because it is experienced within the regressed context of camouflage and because it involves the relinquishing of personal responsibility, cannot amount to an authentic, expansive and self-sustaining power. Most often this sense of power is sustained by reaction formation against actual powerlessness and by pathological narcissism seeking an illusionary

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 141

omnipotence. Thus in conflict situations we frequently observe bureaucrats barricaded behind their positions, intransigent, defiant and ready to fight to the last organizational "soldier." This bureaucratic intransigence can be well illustrated by the highly publicized case of a research scientist, Chander Grover, against the National Research Council of Canada. Five years after Grover filed his complaint to The Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Tribunal ruled in 1992, after a lengthy and costly trial, that his employer discriminated against him in matters of his employment and ethnic origin. It took two additional court rulings (in 1992 and in 1994) to force the management of the National Research Council to comply with the Tribunal order and implement the remedies (see Ottawa Citizen, 1993). Many commented that this defiant behavior on behalf of the Council's administrators is an indi¬ cation that bureaucracy is invincible. This statement may be correct only in a uni-modal setting where one form of bureaucracy is employed to contain another bureaucratic form. If the initial resist¬ ance to implementing the court judgement were followed by efforts to personally identify the entrenched bureaucrats and expose them to the public eye or to some direct wrath of the defendant's sup¬ porters, then their compliance would have been swift. To lose access to the confrontational mode can be sometimes costly in time, money and justice. The unbalanced centering of aggression expression on the nonconfrontational mode can also contribute to the development of an inflated and unrealistic perception of one's position as powerful. This inflated and narcissistic perception runs the risk of collapsing into utter disarray when bluntly challenged by a reaction from the confrontational mode. Bureaucrats who may have a thorough com¬ mand of the operations, legal underpinnings and the political intri¬ cacies of an important post may define operationally their reality in terms of these bureaucratic powers that are completely under their control. As a result their sense of power runs the risk of progressing (pathologically) toward a narcissistic sense of omnipotence. In a case I came to witness, an individual on the losing end of legal action called his lawyer opponent to tell him that he would not be pursu¬ ing further legal options, but was planning to "rearrange his face." Upon hearing the threat the legal mind fell back in a state of shock and could not work or eat until I got him reassurances that his chal¬ lenger would not pursue the physical option. Such drastic reactions take place when the bureaucratic structures preclude the dynamic

242 Camouflaged Aggression

balancing of the two modes and allow a dangerous inflation in the perception of one's institutional powers. The illustration in chapter two about public servants becoming prompt and courteous with the advent of a civil war resembles the above case and accordingly requires further clarification. The cam¬ ouflaged aggression of the public servant during the civil war was deterred by the increased probability of a retaliatory punch in the nose by a client. However, it is not only the promptness of the retal¬ iation that resulted in the deterrent impact; it is also the shift in mode. The promptness in delivery of a sanction enhances its deterrent effect while delay weakens it. But bureaucratic sanctions can also be swift. A recourse to immediate complaining to a supervisor is also possible but may not have the same impact as a direct verbal or physical burst, because a complaint is still subject to maneuvering while a punch or a swear word are not. Thus the shift in mode in this case had an important deterrent impact. A bureaucratic and camouflaged quest for power tends to progress (pathologically) toward absolute (infinite) experience of power. The confrontational mode, regardless of the medium, whether it be verbal, emotional or physical, is inherently oriented towards finite expression. Thus, modal balancing also involves bal¬ ancing the psychological forces belonging to the finite and the infi¬ nite.

3. Understanding bureaucratic avoidance of responsibility As discussed in chapter three, the camouflaged blending of the bureaucrat with the organization is motivated, in part, by the need to avoid responsibility. Responsibility in this case is avoided at two levels: at the level of escaping or minimizing negative feedback for actions taken, and at the level of avoiding having to take new action or having to "stick one's neck out." Two major causes were offered: one stemming from the structured operations such as competition, anxiety, passing the puck and survival adaptations (e.g., as analyzed by Jackall, 1987; and presented in chapter three) and one stemming from a phylogenetically based regression towards a state of camou¬ flage activated by the formal structures of the organization. For a comprehensive understanding of bureaucratic avoidance of respon¬ sibility, a third causal dimension should be included. This stems from the preponderance of personality orientations that include the previously described conflict avoidant personality syndrome (see

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 143

chapter five of this text; Abdennur, 1987) and the minimal self of Lasch (1984; also see chapter six). The issue of the "Tainted Blood Scandal" in Canada can be used as an illustration. During the early 80s it was becoming clear that AIDS involved viral transmission, a realization that should have been translated quickly into measures of blood screening, which also should have included tests for screening hepatitis C available in 1986. The failure of the Red Cross to take prompt action resulted in 13 000 Canadians contracting HIV and hepatitis C by 1990. The fail¬ ures of the Canadian Red Cross and other health officials included not taking adequate steps to prevent high-risk donors from donating their blood; not moving quickly enough to replace its inventory of contaminated blood products used by hemophiliacs with newer, heat-treated products that were safe; failure to track infected blood recipients before they unknowingly passed it to their sexual partners (Krever Report, 1997). Documents from 1981 show that federal blood regulators had several opportunities to slow the spread of hepatitis C, but they did not take them (Ottawa Citizen, 1998). The Inquiry named 17 officials responsible, but no prosecution was rec¬ ommended, stating that while some failed to carry out their duties, "the whole system has failed" the victims. All of the three causes (organizational, phylogenetic and per¬ sonality orientation) for avoiding responsibility noted above may have been implicated in the blood scandal. But the fashionable explanation in such cases is to blame only the first cause: the "sys¬ tem" of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is implicitly conceived strictly as a system of management that suffers from the classical symptoms of impersonality, red-tape, passing the puck, emotional bluntness and the like. This perspective, that endorses Wrong's (1961) "over-social¬ ized" conception of humans, ignores the fact that organizations not only act on their employees, they also recruit them. Organizations select, reward and promote certain types of individuals and exclude from their ranks certain others. Recruitment is seldom a choice between those who qualify and those who don't, particularly in recent times, where the technically qualified are in abundance. Thus personality differences are crucial in organizational decision-mak¬ ing despite the overall impact of bureaucratic structures. Furthermore, some of those personality differences differentially interact with the role structures in a variety of resonating accommo¬ dations.

144 Camouflaged Aggression

The failure of the bureaucrats to assume active responsibility and leadership in the case of the tainted blood case strongly points out to bureaucratized conflict avoidants and minimalists. Governmental and public bureaucracy has been partial to individu¬ als with these personality orientations. It appears that for reasons of political functionality, such individuals have been recruited into the system with passion. Their functional features appear to be in their non-challenging, non boat-rocking and status quo stabilizing con¬ duct. Their dysfunctional impact is drastically felt during crisis when responsible initiatives and leadership are required. In such conditions, as in the case of the blood case, they can precipitate calamities. Some claim that conflict avoidants and intellectual mini¬ malists predominate in public bureaucracies because business tends to draw and absorb most of the confrontational types. This may be the case, but a careful observer may notice instances where the psy¬ chologically and intellectually castrated personality of a profession¬ al male is regarded as an asset in certain Canadian public institu¬ tions. This recent trend of recruiting conflict avoidants and minimal¬ ists into public institutions has been reversing the familiar process of the institutionalization of charisma. Traditionally, a positive correla¬ tion between a high bureaucratic office and the incumbents' person¬ al charisma used to be a consistent expectation. Individuals promot¬ ed or recruited for senior managerial or political positions tended to be more forceful, more principled, more self confident and more personally wholesome than their subordinates. With the selective recruitment and promotion of conflict avoidants and minimalists, the above described positive correlation between charisma and the senior public office has been withering away. Instead of expecting rank to embrace character, clients can now expect non-committal, banal, concrete, self-centred, behind-covering. Machiavellian survivalists to be happily accommodated to rank and expertise. This trend, which is most typically a Canadian contribution, can be seen as an institutional version of the "anti-hero" theme in drama; the institutionalization of anti-charisma.

4. Which is more viable, an ethical or a philosophical perspective ? Some authors (e.g., Sankar, 1994) adopt an ethical challenge view of organizational deviance. The appeal to and the cultivation of a sense of ethicality is expected to have a controlling and pro-social

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 145

orienting impact on organizational behavior. In a demonstration of commitment to an ethics approach, Sankar lists the names of books advocating Machiavellian management, but avoids citing the authors' names out of an apparent ethical disdain. I believe that challenging camouflaged aggression from a predominantly ethical approach is ineffective for three main reasons. First, deviant behavior can be distinguished from unethical behavior because in the latter the employee relies on societal rather than organizational standards to define the unacceptable act (e.g., Robinson and Bennett, 1995). Societal and organizational norms may conflict and under such conditions unethical behavior is not always deviant. These authors give the example of a company dumping toxic waste in a river, which may be seen as an unethical act from a societal perspective; however, the action of the employee who blew the whistle on the company would be viewed by his colleagues as a violation of organizational norms. Second, ethical conduct is essentially the domain of individual character, and as such, ethical standards are highly subject to per¬ sonal relativity. Also, ethical standards are contingent upon more general social or ideological values to the extent that when the alle¬ giance to the ultimate societal values is weakened, ethical behavior is also weakened. Ethicality as an individual commitment to pro¬ social behavior, if it is to be effective, needs to be guided and ener¬ gized by dominant socio-cultural or ideological values. Third, the poor viability of an ethical approach may lie in its incompatibility with the current Zeitgeist, which is being condi¬ tioned by self-serving and globalized financial interests. An observation regarding ethical trends at the Canadian public institutions scene may be worth noting. The increased reliance on advanced technology, the advent of young university graduates into the public service and the scarcity of jobs appear to have contributed to an efficient and well organized lower management. This lower management can be characterized by a "technical" ethicality which is in line with the "technical rationality" trend of Max Weber, involving a commitment only to operationalized versions of fairness and justice. This technical ethicality of lower management is mani¬ fested as obedience to authority, strict adherence to regulations and reluctance to use discretionary personal powers. Such employees can be described as operating at a moral level equivalent to the typ¬ ically rule-following stage four of Kohlberg's (1969) model. This technical ethicality extends also to middle, but may not at all quali-

146 Camouflaged Aggression

fy higher and political management. At that upper level of political management, ethicality is not imposed by stringent administrative codes nor by an all-encompassing ideology. Incumbents at this upper level are vulnerable to any pressure or inducement which results in them betraying the interests of society. The converse of the above model can be conceived where a stringently ethical upper management exists together with a corrupt lower management. There is also, perhaps most common around the world, a third model where corruption and influence peddling are continuous from the bottom to the top. But what is most particular about the first model is its deceptiveness. Since most interaction of clients remains at lower management level, the impressive organi¬ zational efficiency and the technical ethicality may lead people to believe that the whole political system is equally fair and ethical and operates exclusively in interest of society. A neat, polite, high-tech, reliable and efficient front-desk management may mask corrupt political trends and designs.

Combat Philosophy Combating camouflaged aggression should rely on a threedimensional strategy. The first dimension involves the theoretical, dynamic and comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. The second dimension involves intervention approaches that can reduce and manage camouflaged aggression, including dealing with personality disorders as a source of aggression. The third dimension is a normative and value related one involving the affirmation of confrontation. Confrontational values basically are: objectivity, rationality, comprehensiveness, direct expression of opposition, radicality in intervention, pro-activeness and the abstract construction of self as having dignity and honor. These values were traditionally held as higher than their opposites and were considered as the core values of masculinity. A non-sexist understanding of these core confronta¬ tional values, and an examination of their crucial role in the evolu¬ tion of the human race and their social functions with the explosive development and spread of advanced technology, may now be most timely. No society can afford a demise in these values nor even the luxury of viewing them as pathological features of men's behavior as implied in a remark by Keillor (1993): "Years ago, manhood was

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 147

an opportunity for achievement, and now, it is a problem to over¬ come." Without a strong allegiance to the values of confrontation, we risk, not only a rampant increase in camouflaged aggression, but also a rapid slide into a state of one dimensional (Marcuse, 1964) containment and domination unprecedented in human history.

148 Camouflaged Aggression

Conclusion

The theoretical model presented in this book assumes bi-modal¬ ity of aggression expression. Aggression can be expressed through confrontation or through non-confrontation. When aggression is expressed unduly or exclusively through one mode, the imbalance is likely to increase both the variety of forms in which aggression is expressed in that mode and also the overall quantum of aggression. That is, modal imbalance causes aggression to proliferate and increase while modal balance directs aggression towards contain¬ ment. Although modal imbalance in favor of confrontational aggres¬ sion results in the augmentation of the quantum of aggression, it quickly becomes geared, and particularly within organizations, toward a speedy resolution and subsequent dissipation. The lack of open consciousness that accompanies non-confrontational aggres¬ sion and its insidious dynamics preclude direct resolution and allows the modal imbalance to augment aggression over long peri¬ ods of time. The rapid proliferation and formalization of organiza¬ tions in contemporary society has created a vast number of struc¬ tured opportunities for the expression and delivery of aggression in the non-confrontational mode. The drastic increase in the number of organizational opportunities to deliver aggression, together with supportive norms, are creating a modal imbalance in favor of nonconfrontational aggression, and are increasing the quantum of aggression within organizations. The increase of camouflaged aggression is undermining mental health, productivity and morale in organizations and subsequently in society. Furthermore, the pre¬ ponderance of camouflaged aggression through social institutions threatens to regress the quality of aggression expression towards primordial styles that lead to socially- and culturally-destructive behaviors. The proposed model also directs future inquiry towards alterna¬ tive approaches for understanding and researching the notoriously unattractive and problematic aspects of bureaucratic behavior. The investigation of the grand paradox of regression towards the state of camouflage and of the personality-centred processes of selective recruitment and self-duplication in organizations would comple¬ ment research focusing on the dynamics of camouflaged aggression along the proposed model. Selective recruitment and self-duplica¬ tion can also be studied from the perspective of behavioral genetics

Prevention & Control of Camouflaged Aggression 149

and evolutionary psychology that goes beyond the mere "interac¬ tion" between separable elements in personality and environment. Genotypes are seen (e.g., Scarr & McCartney, 1983; Freedman, 1997) as seeking their own environments, which implies a recurring feed¬ back that can create dynamic cyber-systems. Genetic arguments are not incompatible with social and psychological explanations; they can lend another level of analysis to the investigation, which may suggest methods to control potentially dangerous developments such as the institutional dominance of the conflict-avoidant person¬ ality type. The model also implies that as social life becomes permeated with organizations, most aggression in society is expressed through the abundantly available organizational structures. This formal structuring of aggression forces the patterns of aggressive expres¬ sion to be uniform and less gender-related and, consequently, makes equivalent the gender contribution to the quantum of aggression. The research investigation of this relationship can have important implications. The recommended intervention strategy involves the three dimensions outlined above, namely, a model for understanding the phenomenon; intervention approaches; and a guiding policy (the affirmation of confrontation) that is both practical and normative. It should be pointed out in this third context that no social intervention can be value neutral. Any attempt to make implicit the value posi¬ tion of an intervention or to mask it (usually through assumed notions of being "scientific") violates the principles of scientific objectivity and contributes to manipulation and camouflage. The most effective way to minimize bias stemming from implied values, according to Max Weber, is to acknowledge them and make them explicit. Effective intervention also requires the identification of available organizational avenues and the structuring of new ones that serve confrontational expression in order to remedy the current imbalance that favors the non-confrontational mode. Although the resort to either mode can be unavoidable under certain circumstances, the confrontational mode should be given precedence over the non-confrontational one as an ideal or recommended mode of expression, whenever possible. This precedence is based on the view that the resort to camouflaged aggression represents a regression within a major evolutionary trend of the human species. In human society, confrontation is an essential part of the dialectical process that

150 Camouflaged Aggression

enhances consciousness and the development of higher cultural forms. Statistics indicate that aggression involving physical assault and coercion (violence) has been on the decline since the last three decades in most western societies. Despite increased reporting and media exposure, most forms of interpersonal physical aggression are evidencing a decline. Concern with the issue of violent aggres¬ sion is derailing our attention from acknowledging and attending to the more serious problem of deception and its legitimation. It has long been argued whether the high exposure of violent scenes on T.V. over the past four decades have had an impact on the preva¬ lence of certain forms of violent behavior in society. However, the entertainment industry presents us with even more models of cam¬ ouflaged aggression in the form of interpersonal manipulation, deceit, treachery, masking, false pretences and trickery, and these are often presented as normal and acceptable. Modeling deceit and other forms of camouflaged aggression may be more contagious than modeling violence. Camouflaged aggression is much more harmful to mental health, and to social integration. The most serious threat to mental health, freedom and social integration may not be coming from clenched fists, armed robbers or gun-toting individuals. A more serious threat to society may be lurk¬ ing behind soft-spoken and smiling faces pursuing an agenda that is different from what they espouse; by politicians and media issue peddlers who use distortion, exhibitionism, propaganda and manip¬ ulation to satisfy their own interests or special interest groups, regardless of the risk to society at large. Camouflaged aggression is the current malaise, not violence. The unchallenged entrenchment of camouflaged aggression may be spawning conditions for an ulti¬ mate and drastic occurrence of violence.

GLOSSARY Concepts in the Book

1. Aggression: any action or inaction directed by an individual towards the conscious or unconscious goal of harming or making other individuals suffer. 2. Medium of aggression: the context of the expression and delivery of aggression (physical, verbal, emotional and cog¬ nitive). 3. Mode of aggression: basic qualitative style of the expression of aggression. Two basic modes can be identified: the con¬ frontational and non-confrontational. 4. Confrontational mode: expression of aggression that is direct, active and conscious and where the intention, the per¬ petrator, the act and the target are readily identifiable. 5. Non-confrontational mode: expression of aggression that is indirect, passive and oriented towards masking the inten¬ tion, the perpetrator, the act and the target. 6. Camouflaged aggression: non-confrontational aggression expressed within the organization and employing its formal structures for the delivery and masking of the aggression. 7. Violence: use of physical force to injure or harm. A form of aggression expressed through a physical medium, often in a confrontational mode. 8. Modal balance: the availability of options, avenues and norms that permit the expression of aggression along both modes in a given context. 9. Modal imbalance: the blockage of options, avenues and norms belonging to one mode while having those belonging to the other mode open and available in a given context. 10. Modal shift: the response to aggression by means of meth¬ ods belonging to the opposite mode. Appropriate modal shift can directly contribute to modal balance and to deter¬ rence. 11. Uni-modal aggression: aggression delivered through forms of behavior that are restricted to one mode. This restriction is personally or structurally imposed or both. 151

12. Bi-modal aggression: aggression delivered through forms of behavior belonging to the two modes. 13. Quantum of aggression: the amount of aggression that is present within and among individuals in an interactive con¬ text. The given quantity of aggression can be present in both kinetic and potential states. 14. Geometric spread of aggression: the progressive spread of aggression among the interacting members of an organiza¬ tion, which results from the displacement of aggression from one individual to several others, who in turn displace on more individuals. 15. Resonance of aggression: the amplification in the quantum of aggression beyond what is expected from the response to a certain stimulus. This amplification results from the stimu¬ lus targeting a personality vulnerability or disorder of an individual or from an individual being targeted by multiple sources of aggressive stimuli within the organization. 16. Warehousing of aggression: the storage of aggression with¬ in individuals and within their structured relationships inside the organization. Aggression is stored both as poten¬ tial and kinetic energy. 17. Cathartic release: the feeling of release and the diminution in the need to further aggress following the expression of aggression. Confrontational aggression produces a faster cathartic release than non-confrontational aggression. 18. Interpersonal sabotage: the non-confrontational aggression expressed among closely interacting individuals such as friends and co-workers. 19. Bureaucratic sabotage: the disruption or the undermining of work efficiency carried out by junior bureaucrats against their seniors without actually breaking the law. Excessive rule-following and information-overloading are examples. 20. The functions of camouflage: The first function is to protect the animal from being observed by a predator; the second is to facilitate efficient delivery of aggression for predation; and the third is to protect the predator from the defensive reaction of the prey. Organizational camouflage provides the bureaucrat, in a parallel manner, with the same func¬ tions.

152

21. The paradox of modern life: The contemporary formal organization, the most evolved social structure, is invoking, catalyzing and accommodating itself to the highly primitive behavioral strategy of camouflage. 22. Phylogenetic regression towards camouflage: operating within the complex organizational structures can induce a regression along phylogenetic paths toward the primitive state of camouflage characterized by hiding and deception and by the non-confrontational expression of aggression. 23. Hydraulic principle: accumulated aggression seeks expres¬ sion at the point of least resistance. 24. Hydraulically expressed aggression: aggression expressed at the point of least resistance. 25. Hydraulic victimization: being a victim of aggression as the result of occupying a point of ieast resistance due to person¬ al or situational vulnerability. 26. Malignant aggression: aggression propelled solely by the need for tension release and a convenient situation. 27. Anomic aggression: aggression committed without any ref¬ erence to social values or sense of justice. 28. Position vulnerability: characteristics of the position (not the individual incumbent) that present points of least resist¬ ance or weak deterrence. 29. Position victimology: the study of a position's characteris¬ tics which contribute to the victimization of the individual who occupies the position. 30. Regressed aggression: aggression with one or more of the following characteristics: hydraulically expressed, malig¬ nant, anomic and camouflaged. 31. Self-directed aggression in organizations: organizations increase and proliferate the avenues for the delivery of aggression against others and against self. Accordingly, selfdestructiveness increases with the increase of structured opportunities that can be used for self-sabotage. 32. Conflict avoidance syndrome: a pervasive personality ori¬ entation that consistently avoids conflict and polarization. 33. Minimal self: refers to Christopher Lasch's concept of con¬ stricted sense of self that primarily seeks survival with min¬ imal conditions placed on the quality of survival. 153

34. Psycho-structural marriage: the adaptive compatibility between the needs and characteristics of an incumbent's per¬ sonality and those of the position. In the case of disordered personalities, the marriage increases the motivation for the delivery of camouflaged aggression. 35. Quantity to quality conversion: the increase in the number of incumbents with particular or with disordered personali¬ ty characteristics will lead to qualitative changes at the level of interaction and operations within the organization. 36. The principle of equivalence in pathological narcissism: the facility of the narcissist in supporting one goal and its opposite at the same time. 37. Consensus on injustice: the compliance with or the cooper¬ ation of managerial and professional staff in carrying out an unjust action against a client or a member of the organiza¬ tion. 38. The neutralization of conflict: the use of "civilized" office etiquette and interpersonal courtesy and "friendliness" to eliminate the overt and affective manifestations of conflict. 39. Psychological disarming: the neutralizing of the retaliatory hostility of a victim by means of office interpersonal civility, which allows the perpetrator to perpetuate his aggression under safer conditions. 40. Pseudo-Confrontation: the use of an assertive interpersonal style to confront the person/s but avoid confronting the real issue. 41. Bureaucratic intransigence: the stubborn and oppositional behavior of a bureaucrat that involves fighting with an orga¬ nizational position and at the same time camouflaging self with it. 42. Bureaucratic avoidance of responsibility: avoiding the neg¬ ative repercussions of previous decisions and avoiding hav¬ ing to take new decisions or initiatives by resorting to a cam¬ ouflaged blending with the position. 43. Bureaucratic vendetta: the perseverance of retaliatory inten¬ tion in a lowered or suspended state of affect and character¬ ized by waiting and timing. 44. Confrontational revenge vs. getting even: in the former, the victim directs his retaliatory action directly and overtly at

154

the perpetrator, thus speeding conflict resolution and pro¬ moting deterrence. In the latter, the victim directs his revenge actions in a non-confrontational, protracted, dis¬ placed and camouflaged manner, which fails to shorten con¬ flict or to promote deterrence. 45. Honor vs. vanity: honor is an abstract and enduring per¬ spective to self; is experienced internally as self respect; is not amenable to self-manipulation; is self-monitoring; and is defended by healthy narcissism. Vanity is an alienated and more public version of honor; is predominantly experienced externally as public image; is amenable to self-manipulation; is less self-monitoring of behavior than honor; and is defend¬ ed by pathological narcissism. 46. The balance sheet in personality disorders: the ratio between the negative and the positive input that an organi¬ zation receives from an employee with a personality disor¬ der assessed over a lengthy period of time. This ratio is ulti¬ mately not in favor of the organization and this relationship can be used as a diagnostic criterion for the presence of a personality disorder. 47. Technical ethicality: the commitment to promote fairness and equity at the level of applying of regulations, but with¬ out necessarily adhering to the concomitant abstract princi¬ ples of ethics and justice. 48. The institutionalization of anti-charisma: the traditional positive association between rank and personal charisma can wither away in public organizations as a result of exten¬ sive hiring and promotion of conflict avoidants, minimalists and survivalists.

Labels for Some Forms of Camouflaged Aggression. 1. Withdrawal of love: deliberate withdrawal of attention and affect from someone. 2. Affectional yo-yoing: the intermittent withdrawal which involves shifting unpredictably between affection and cool¬ ness. 3. Carpet pulling: engaging in anxiety-provoking practices. 4. Dusting: the dissemination of harmful information.

155

5. Decision laundering: the rationalization of a personallymotivated decision in terms of the organization's needs and restrictions. 6. Organizational foliage: an analogy taken from the natural world and referring to the intricate organizational structures where aggressors take cover. 7. Departmental Crown Prince: a senior administrator with a Ph.D. and with elevated narcissism.

Techniques of Camouflaged Aggression 1. Indecision: a tendency towards decision avoidance reflect¬ ing psychological insecurity and a technique for camou¬ flaged aggression. In the latter case, indecision can be used to frustrate, exacerbate and demoralize others. 2. Rigidity: the use of bureaucratic procedure to block change and to thwart innovative ideas. 3. Time Manipulation: the use of bureaucratic procedure to rush people or delay them. 4. Information Manipulation: the use of bureaucratic proce¬ dure to disseminate information, withhold information, build information and time information. 5. Withdrawal: the use of withdrawal of attention and positive affect to induce anxiety, confusion and lowered self-esteem in an employee. 6. Inaccessibility: the use of legitimate techniques available in an organization to avoid or postpone a direct contact with a client or a member of the organization. 7. Non-Interference: the deliberate ignoring of an employee who is unwittingly committing a mistake. 8. Entrapment: the luring of a victim in some beguiling way, such as by fake warmth and understanding, into suspending his self-protective behavior and compromising himself. 9. Undermining the sense of security: the use of a variety of anxiety-provoking procedures for the purpose of undermin¬ ing the sense of security of employees. A state of insecurity can make employees compliant and vulnerable to manipula¬ tion.

156

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Psychology / Occupational and Industrial

Camouflaged aggression is a form of antisocial behavior in which the formal regulations and procedures of an organization are used in both delivering and masking aggression. As a result, new dynamics of aggression emerge which can mask the motive, the act of aggression, the perpetrator and sometimes even the victim. Paradoxically, the most advanced structures of contemporary society are promoting primal strategies of deception and camouflage usually only found in the survival and predatory behavior of lower species. This book deals with the identification and control of camouflaged aggression in all organizations, from small businesses to multinational corporations and governments. Here, you’ll find descriptions of patterns of camouflaged aggression within the workplace, such as time and information manipulation, withdrawal, inaccessibility, entrapment and undermining the sense of security. The book also discusses the role of personality and ideological factors in the augmentation, transmission and normalization of camouflaged aggression. The author analyzes the impact of this non-violent aggression on mental health and on productivity, and its possible function in explosive violence and random mass murder. The final chapter suggests strategies for the identification, prevention and management of camouflaged aggression in the workplace. Dr. Alexander Abdennur is currently part of a private consulting and training group which operates on the international scene by developing and delivering training programs in criminal justice, education, mental health, and management. Prior to 1995, he worked for 15 years with federal research divisions as a contract researcher in criminal justice. He holds an M.A. in criminology and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Ottawa. Dr. Abdennur is widely published in professional journals and research reports, and has one other book published, The Conflict Resolution Syndrome (1987; University of Ottawa Press).

Cover Design: Dean MacDonald and Alvin Choong

Printed in Canada