>Using a two-wave, multisource survey design and collecting primary data from 118 business units of a headhunting company in China
>>The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
The day someone proposes solutions to the dynamics of people in the work place will be a good day. I've run simulations of subject matter similar to this. The complexity is brutal, and so far I've come up dry in actionable work topologies, all of them are vulnerable to certain types of jerks...
It's all unpublished unfortunately. I don't work in this field, I just started doing it because I have had such a rough ride in industry and needed to work on some kind of plan for setting up a company that wasn't riddled with the toxic stuff I've experienced.
Set up a protocol to identify misbehaving agents and get rid of them. Also guessing that your model does not include an affinity factor. "Certain types of jerks" are attracted to certain types of organizations.
I'm reaching here but maybe some old HP hands can chime in - what sort of people did the original HP attract? I'm guessing like attracts like.
"HP's founders were very remarkable people at all levels, starting with Bill and Dave."
The jerks will identify flaws in your protocol and exploit them to get rid of their rivals. This is an area where only intelligent human judgment can work (and even that doesn't always work). Any type of strict protocol that could be modeled and simulated in software is doomed to failure and a waste of time.
Interesting and very curious. Honestly, I can understand your hesitancy to publish because of the pearls-before-swine problem. However, I promise not to read in any way other than curiosity. If you add your email to your profile or use the one in mine, I'd be happy to converse.
I think we're going to find ourselves either quoting books about organized sports and military training, or re-inventing a bunch of wheels.
The complexity is brutal because of the star pattern (n! connections) but one thing about the star pattern is that it's an unweighted graph. When all of the weights are identical, that's the textbook definition of anarchy. Of course everything is a mess. Everyone is trying to be in charge while half of them are also trying not to be in charge and still get their way.
> Dr Liu offered two theories as to why narcissism stands in the way of knowledge transfer: One, narcissistic unit heads may strongly believe that they have a superior knowledge stock, compared to executives in other units, and understand their unit’s problems better – leading them to believe others’ knowledge is less valuable. The second theory is that these executives may believe that knowledge transfer may diminish their sense of superiority and uniqueness, leading them to decline to receive external knowledge in an attempt to preserve their image.
If you're worried you might have narcissitic tendencies, don't worry too much: a real narcissist would never entertain such a notion.
Narcissists are typically extremely worried, though they won't admit it, probably not to themselves. They are people who feel extremely vulnerable and insist that everything around them cannot threaten that vulnerability. Their kids, for example, have to make them feel like the perfect parent. Not a happy way to live, for them or the people around them.
One of the most fun things about psychology is that everything sounds intuitive and obvious, even if wrong.
There's an anecdote about a professor telling his students on the first day of a Psychology class, "some things about this field are obvious common sense — for instance, a baby won't recognize and prefer more attractive people as they're unaware of beauty standards."
The class all agrees, and the professor says "JK, babies actually do! Welcome to Psychology."
Can an argument be rational if it is not founded on evidence? I don't think it is rational to adopt beliefs as a grounds for reasoning without any reasons for adopting them.
Gravity is not, in fact, the attraction of lesser mass to greater mass. Gravity is the repulsion of lesser mass by greater mass.
In the case of the Earth, this means you are repulsed toward the Earth by the weight of the column of space "above" you, and are only prevented from falling through the Earth by its density. The Earth is relatively equally displaced by the column surrounding it, meaning you do not notice this effect.
Gravity seems to come in waves because all things in the relevant column are moving, but the shifting of mass is almost unimportant to your perception because it is such a small value. The magnitude and frequency is such that it goes unnoticed to all but the most sensitive equipment.
.... completely no evidence available, but, it sounds kind of reasonable.
Depends on who you ask – there's a certain school of economists that insists that a sufficiently "rational" argument is in fact preferable to evidence.
You can't find evidence for everything in the moment. If you're forced to act it makes sense to trust what seems most rational given limited knowledge.
It doesn't make sense when you don't need an answer at that time. If you can find evidence, you should.
I almost did this in a literature class. I think it was the second day of the class, and we'd read James Joyce's "An Encounter". The prof read aloud sections of a published analysis of the story -- out of some big tome -- and asked us to discuss it. The analysis was so vacuous and absurd that I came inches from simply walking out, which would have been awkward because there were only like 8 students in the class. Mentally, I mapped out my path to the registrar so that I could drop the class and began checking out.
After a bit of classroom discussion, from which I abstained, the professor threw the book in the trash (clang! it was a metal trashcan) and gave a speech about how the analysis was gibberish, and how you can't just make up stuff about what a story says. He then walked us through how you might actually obtain useful insights about what the story means to say. It was apparent he gave that spiel every semester.
Good god "deep thinkers" extrapolating ridiculous meaning from art/literature is a huge pet peeve of mine. Not too long ago I heard an art curator pull statements out of thin air about the political atmosphere of the time(400yrs ago) based on the angle the picture was drawn from. Incredible what a waste of time an art degree is.
The social effort required to leave into a 15 s statement is so high that you would not have done that. Why make grandiose claims about things you won't do? Like, you're telling me no one has ever said anything absurd to you and you've stayed? Bullshit.
I think that was a joke and two - the only part they worry about, however, is their image. That's not the same as a person worrying about how they have potentially treated someone else.
The article also says "In reality, all of us are at least a little narcissistic. ", so make of that what you will. Me personally, I'm always cautious when research people claim to have found "truths" about human psychology - which is temporal, transient, highly mutable, highly context-dependent and extremely difficult to generalize.
Coming from a tech background which promotes algorithmic thinking, I have been more than humbled when trying to apply such conceptual frameworks to biological systems at my current job.
It also helps to get some experience working in a non-engineering role to broaden your perspective. An MBA isn't essential but can be helpful in teaching at least the basics of finance, accounting, law, marketing, and communications so that you can have productive discussions with those colleagues.
Not disclosing knowledge because it's your leverage. Or not leveraging the knowledge internally because you're "too important" to learn from your people.
Leaders typically demonstrate narcissistic traits to some extent. Whether that's ambition or incentive driven.
Almost to the point of a SNAFU / FUBAR situation when a leader with these traits are backed into a corner or didn't get their way so they aren't willing to comply.
Counter thought here. Isn't there a risk of divulging and sharing information and then said narcissistic executives can scoop up that information and leverage up the chain of command? It's similar to the tragedy of the commons but around knowledge and power. It's also a zero sum mentality.
Yeah for sure. Especially the "leaders" who need aces in their sleeves to perform. Those who lay everything out on the table have nothing to lose. They have enough self-respect to not have to stoop to that level. But the world is full of both these types at this level.
Sounds like an old topic, "capitalism", which has has a deep history and has been studied extensively. Using the term "executive narcissism" provides an excuse to exhume old (stolen) arguments and present them as new academic fodder to the great unwashed masses.
I can't read the actual article, but the summary implies a distinct lack of understanding of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The issue is more that the NPD lives in a fantasy world and compulsively must "prove" that they are better than everyone, or more specifically the compulsively try to break others down. It's completely about power and the ability to trigger negative and traumatizing emotions in others.
I often wonder, do 'good people' make better executives than 'bad people'? Extending on that, I think there's a lot published on how to have more empathy and all these ways to be a good person and manager, but is that as good on the numbers in a purely cutthroat capitalistic game? I would think this may be more/less true the higher up you go.
63 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadhttps://everything2.com/title/SNAFU+Principle
>>The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
hoo-boy.
Maybe I'll share some code at some point.
Your simulations sound fascinating.
I'm reaching here but maybe some old HP hands can chime in - what sort of people did the original HP attract? I'm guessing like attracts like.
"HP's founders were very remarkable people at all levels, starting with Bill and Dave."
https://hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/stories/Bill&DaveStory1...
Possibly the fish rots from the head? Model that.
The complexity is brutal because of the star pattern (n! connections) but one thing about the star pattern is that it's an unweighted graph. When all of the weights are identical, that's the textbook definition of anarchy. Of course everything is a mess. Everyone is trying to be in charge while half of them are also trying not to be in charge and still get their way.
https://www.psychreg.org/executive-narcissism-inhibits-inter...
> Dr Liu offered two theories as to why narcissism stands in the way of knowledge transfer: One, narcissistic unit heads may strongly believe that they have a superior knowledge stock, compared to executives in other units, and understand their unit’s problems better – leading them to believe others’ knowledge is less valuable. The second theory is that these executives may believe that knowledge transfer may diminish their sense of superiority and uniqueness, leading them to decline to receive external knowledge in an attempt to preserve their image.
If you're worried you might have narcissitic tendencies, don't worry too much: a real narcissist would never entertain such a notion.
this is literally not true, research indicates narcissists know they are narcissistic
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beautiful-minds/2011...
http://www.simine.com/docs/Carlson_et_al_JPSP_2011a.pdf
There's an anecdote about a professor telling his students on the first day of a Psychology class, "some things about this field are obvious common sense — for instance, a baby won't recognize and prefer more attractive people as they're unaware of beauty standards."
The class all agrees, and the professor says "JK, babies actually do! Welcome to Psychology."
In the case of the Earth, this means you are repulsed toward the Earth by the weight of the column of space "above" you, and are only prevented from falling through the Earth by its density. The Earth is relatively equally displaced by the column surrounding it, meaning you do not notice this effect.
Gravity seems to come in waves because all things in the relevant column are moving, but the shifting of mass is almost unimportant to your perception because it is such a small value. The magnitude and frequency is such that it goes unnoticed to all but the most sensitive equipment.
.... completely no evidence available, but, it sounds kind of reasonable.
>prevented from falling through the Earth
>Gravity seems to come in waves
>the shifting of mass is almost unimportant to your perception [...] unnoticed to all but the most sensitive equipment.
It doesn't make sense when you don't need an answer at that time. If you can find evidence, you should.
After a bit of classroom discussion, from which I abstained, the professor threw the book in the trash (clang! it was a metal trashcan) and gave a speech about how the analysis was gibberish, and how you can't just make up stuff about what a story says. He then walked us through how you might actually obtain useful insights about what the story means to say. It was apparent he gave that spiel every semester.
I'm glad I stayed; it was a good class.
- write code
- lie in bed from my motorcycle accident
And my code is currently compiling.
But your links are interesting nonetheless.
Coming from a tech background which promotes algorithmic thinking, I have been more than humbled when trying to apply such conceptual frameworks to biological systems at my current job.
1. A willingness to spend more time & effort solving people problems rather than technical problems
2. A comfort with making decisions with a much lower degree of understanding of the facts than an engineer typically would
3. A knack for rallying lots and lots of people in the face of tough situations (bad quarters, customer escalations, cross-functional dysfunction)
4. A talent for public speaking and presentations
Not disclosing knowledge because it's your leverage. Or not leveraging the knowledge internally because you're "too important" to learn from your people.
Leaders typically demonstrate narcissistic traits to some extent. Whether that's ambition or incentive driven.
Almost to the point of a SNAFU / FUBAR situation when a leader with these traits are backed into a corner or didn't get their way so they aren't willing to comply.
First, I don't think you can measure candidates' "narcissism".
Second, if a narcissist executive gets hired, it might because he/she has other advantages over other less-narcissist candidates.
If not they'll still claim they do.