Ignorance-Concealing Use of Immoral Means by Outsider Managers, a Covert Corrupting Practice that Nurtures Immoral Executives

Executives' morality and ethics became major research topics after recent business scandals, but research missed a major explanation of executives' immorality: career advancement by “jumping” between firms that causes gaps of job-essential local know-how, tempting “jumpers” to covertly concealing managerial ignorance (hereafter: CCMI). CCMI causes mismanagement by vicious distrust and ignorance cycles, it bars performance-based career advancement and encourages immoral careerism (Im-C), advancing by immoral subterfuges. Im-C is a known organizational malady but its explanation missed “jumpers” CCMI, probably due to secrecy and conspiracies of silence as well as managers' ignorance of own ignorance. A 5-year semi-native anthropological study of five “jumper”-managed automatic processing plants and their parent inter-kibbutz co-operatives found CCMI-induced Im-C practiced by some 75% of executives, versus only by some 25% of mid-levelers. This gradation of morality suggests that “jumping” careers tend to nurture immoral executives. Ideas for remedies for this corporate malady are suggested, and further study of “jumpers” coping with ignorance is called for