Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/18/2013 10:12 AM: > I think there is a distinction. Organizations that seek to endure need > to prevent bully cliques if for no other reason than so that their > officials maintain their authority, e.g. The President needs to tell the > Generals what to do, not the reverse. I think it's a scale-free thing. > > That means holding individual and emergent group behavior to some > standard. People at all levels in the organization need to be able to > agree that so-and-so went wacko and behaved inappropriately, that they > don't need to tolerate it. Individuals can help this to happen just by > acting consistently with the implicit standard, especially when it is in > their interest to do so.
Hm. So can we use practical jokes as an example? That domain should bring us back to Nick's original issue. Practical jokers are on the cusp between [im]polite behavior. If you're established as part of the clique (say in a cubicle dominated office), then it's considered polite to, say, smear another clique member's phone with vaseline. But it's considered impolite to do that to someone who's not in the clique, even _if_ that outsider might want to be in the clique. The practical joker clique can easily turn into a bully clique by recognizing the wants of the outsider and as they test her to see if she fits the predicate, if they determine she does not, they may play exceptionally cruel jokes on her in order to clarify her out-group status. But they will maintain that, had someone played those jokes on them, they would have taken it in stride because that's what they do to each other "all the time". In an office setting, the boss has an obligation to set the standards for the practical joke boundaries. But by their very nature, the in-group practical jokers purposefully push those boundaries because that's what the clique is defined as ... that _is_ the predicate. The boss also has a competing constraint to encourage camaraderie. How do the in-group practical jokers define [im]polite? I submit that they must have at least 2 definitions of [im]polite, one for members and one for non-members. And they'll likely have a 3rd for the boss. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
