A unique semi-native anthropology of outsider managed automatic processing inter-kibbutz plants and parent IKCs suggests that such involvement is essential for creating virtuous trust and learning cycles, for efficiency, effectiveness and innovation. Kibbutz ex-managers were nominated inter-kibbutz plants’ executives with minimal pertinent expertises; they mostly avoided vulnerability by detachment or coercive involvement. This engendered vicious distrust and ignorance cycles that caused mistakes and failures. Expert kibbutz members came to the rescue and by vulnerable involvement initiated virtuous trust and learning cycles, but they were suppressed as successes made them powerful and threatened bosses’ power. They left, their imported successors remained detached and ignorant, failed and this seesaw repeated itself.

1. High-Trust Culture, the Decisive but Elusive Context
of Informal Managerial Democracy in Highly
Specialized Organizations
Dr. Reuven Shapira, Western Galilee Academic College, Acre, ISRAEL
Paper presented at the 6th
workshop of the First International Network of
Trust researchers, Milano, June 2012
Published: (2013) – “Leaders’ Vulnerable Involvement: Essential for Trust, Learning,
Effectiveness and Innovation in Inter-Co-Operatives.” Journal of Co-operative Organization
and Management, 1(1): 15-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcom.2013.06.003
Having just and fair opportunities to contribute their faculties for problem-solving, decision-
making and innovating, independent of their role and hierarchic position, is both a major
organizational interest and an implicit right of talented, educated and critically minded expert
employees who seek to improve organizational functioning ; without these opportunities, highly
specialized organizations may suffer dearly when competing in markets that have to be efficient,
effective and adaptive by attracting and nurturing critical thinkers and innovative talents.
A manager’s authority is legitimized by her/his supposedly superior capability for making such
contributions. Though s/he is supposed to encourage such employee contributions, consider them
justly and fairly and implement plausible ones, structurally s/he is hindered : If many such
contributions are adopted and succeed, these may question her/his superior capabilities and
undermine her/his authority.
(In order to ease understanding I will subsequently use ‘he’ and ‘his’ for both genders).

2. Trust literature has not alluded to this structural force negating trust between managers and
employees. A manager breaches the trust of knowledgeable employees if he succumbs to this force
and ignores their suggestions using false excuses, or even worse, if he usurps their successes, as
engineer Mehri (2005) depicted in his ethnography of a Toyota subsidiary.
Dore (1973: Ch. 9) found the opposite in a high-trust Hitachi plant: managers encouraged juniors’
innovations and adopted them without usurpation. Dore explained this by their secure authority: A
successful innovative junior could not replace his boss until the boss was either promoted or moved
elsewhere or retired, while his innovations enhanced the boss’s prestige as a successful leader.
Mehri (2005) negates Ouchi ‘s (1981) generalization that Japanese organizational cultures are high-
trust, while others point out that managerial rhetoric of trust and dialogue with subordinates is often
a façade only, without genuine trust (Courpasson and Clegg 2006: 327), especially where impostors or
foolish managers defend authority by blaming others for their own mistakes, failures, and wrongs
while using secrecy, camouflages, bluffs and subterfuges (Dalton 1959; Kets De Vries 1993).
_____________________
Dalton M (1959) Men Who manage. New York: Wiley.
Dore R (1973) British Factory - Japanese Factory. Berkeley: University of California.
Courpasson D and Clegg S (2006) Dissolving the Iron Cages? Tocqueville, Michels, bureaucracy and the
perpetuation of elite power. Organization 13(3): 319-343.
Kets de Vries MFR (1993) Leaders, Fools, and Impostors. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mehri D (2005) Notes from Toyota-land. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University.
Ouchi WG (1981) Theory Z. Reading (MA): Addison-Wesley.
2

3. The Choice Between Trust and Seduction/Coercion
Usually a manager, after taking charge, aims at establishing personal authority by introducing
changes and innovations, seeking real or imagined success that proves that he was the right
choice for office. If he clearly fails, he is replaced, but if he achieves success or an image of it, this
empowers him and attracts loyal supporters.
He may trustfully consult and openly share knowledge with them, using their and his know-
how for problem-solving and innovating, or he may turn them into a clique of loyal clients whose
unquestioned support for his policies and decisions is gained in return for privileges, promotion
and other benefits, while coercing others into doing their jobs by punitive means.
Seductive/coercive means are simpler, their impact is clearer and immediate, and their use
proves a leader’s supremacy and assures his self-worth (Kets de Vries 1993), much more than the
long, complex, and hazardous process of leading democratically by trust relations that require
consensus on aims, means and allocation of duties and rewards (Fox 1974; Semler 1993).
A leader’s use of seduction/coercion breeds low-trust relations and culture: each employee
uses his powers, influence, knowledge, expertise and other intangible assets to further personal
aims, like the leader. Such leaders and cultures are common: Gallup polls over 25 years of some
80,000 managers, found only a very few of them to be truly effective leaders who used
unconventional high-trust practices (Buckingham & Coffman 1999). I’ll show it by ethnography of
an automatic cotton gin plant which anthropological study of four other gin plants, 20 kibbutz
plants, 4 kibbutzim and the whole kibbutz field corroborated (Shapira 2008).
_________________
Buckingham M & Coffman C (1999) First Break All the Rules. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Semler R (1993) Mavrick. New York: Warner.
Shapira R (2008) Transforming Kibbutz Research. Cleveland: New World.
3

4. Managerial Careers Mostly Advanced Through Kibbutz High-Trust Cultures
and FOs’ Low-Trust Cultures
The kibbutz field consisted of 270 kibbutzim (pl. of kibbutz) and 250-300 inter-kibbutz
federative organizations (hereafter FOs), with some 4500 kibbutz member administrators called
pe’ilim (singular: pa’il) and 15-18.000 hired operators. Researchers did not study oligarchic FOs in
order to defend kibbutz egalitarian and democratic image, hence, numbers are inexact.
A kibbutz is a trust-based commune, while pe’ilim-managed FOs resembled outside firms:
Contrary to the kibbutz managerial rotation norm (rotatzia) stipulating a few year terms to
maintain democracy and egalitarianism, many pe’ilim held jobs for decades. Their careers
commenced inside kibbutzim in member-operated small work units called branches in which
cultures were often high-trust, egalitarian and democratic. Managers were mostly competent
insiders with much knowledge and phronesis, Greek for practical wisdom acquired while coping
with challenges (Townley 2002). They often worked shoulder to shoulder with members, coped
with major problems, learned in communities of practitioners (Orr 1996), and innovated thanks to
trustful knowledge sharing and cooperation, leading to exceptional success (Shapira 2008).
When such one advanced to manage his kibbutz he often repeated such practices, but if
advancing further to manage an FO he often faced low-moral politics: image building, cunning,
subterfuges and loyalty to oligarchic patrons preferred over trustful, effective management.
However, he could either choose to repeat high-trust practices habituated in the kibbutz, or
conform to FOs’ low-trust practices.
_________________
Townley B (2002) Managing with modernity. Organization 9(4): 549-573.
4

5. ‘Parachuting’ Managers and Cotton Gin Plant’s Low-Trust Culture
The cotton gin plant was a part of large industrial-commercial cooperative, Hamerkaz Regional
Enterprises (pseudonyms, as all names hereafter) owned by 39 kibbutzim. It employed 27
permanent staff and 75 provisional workers in the high season, operating around the clock and
processing some 55.000 tons of raw cotton worth some $US23 million by two processing units, each
with dozens of large machines, huge tortuous pipes and conveyors and 200 and 250 electric motors.
Their successful orchestration required prolonged specialization acquired on the job.
Operators were hired urbanites with technical high-school educations, inferior to that of pe’ilim,
but pe’ilim did not experience operator jobs; they were ‘parachuted’ (as it is termed in Israel) from
kibbutz offices to managing the plant, formally aimed at tuning it to kibbutz interests. ‘Parachuting’
enhanced distrust between them and operators as pe’ilim knew little about operators’ hardships
and often suspected them of harming pe’ilim interests. In addition, cultural differences between
Ashkenazi Jewish pe’ilim and Oriental Jew and Arab urbanites also enhanced distrust.
Another decisive factor was ignorance: Managers lacking job-relevant expertise defended their
authority by dissociating themselves from employees to prevent exposure of ignorance, similar to
Blau’s (1955) professionals, and as Edgerton’s (1967) retarded youngsters’ avoidance of encounters
that exposed incompetence. Unfortunately, detachment that prevented vulnerability (Zand 1972)
kept them ignorant and engendered vicious distrust circles (Fox 1974; Vlaar et al. 2007).
_____________________
Blau PM (1955) The Dynamics of Bureaucracy. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Fox A (1974) Beyond Contract. London: Faber.
Edgerton RB (1967) The Cloak of Competence. Berkeley (CA): University of California.
Vlaar PWL et Al. (2007) On the evolution of trust, distrust, and formal coordination and control…
Group & Organization Management, 32(4): 407-429.
5

6. Oligarchic Low-Trust Context of Provisional High-Trust Culture
Many managers were ignorant since they were nominated according to loyalty to an oligarchic FO
head rather than relevant competencies for job. This largely explained their choice of seduction/
coercion rather than trustful management and the rarity of high-trust cultures in FOs.
The change in the cotton gin plant from a conservative bureaucratic low-trust culture into high-
trust innovative one was short-lived. The entrance of a servant transformational leader (Burns
1978; Greenleaf 1977) engendered a high-trust culture with much employee participation in shop
floor decision-making without any formal changes, and 4 years later, with this leader’s exit, the
plant returned to previous low-trust culture, also without any formal changes.
The kibbutz field’s oligarchization commenced in the 1940s. It impacted the plant culture: The
first manager (1961-1971) was an old ‘parachutist’ ignorant of ginning problems who followed
prime kibbutz leaders’ conservative detached oligarchic rule (Shapira 2008). His more
knowledgeable successor tried autocratic involvement but failed, and a new CEO of the
cooperative replaced him with his ignorant protégé Shavit (32), an ex-kibbutz economic manager.
Shavit repeated conservative detachment and low-moral capitalist practices, using financial control
and dirty politics such as secretly nurturing ties with a shop steward who became his informer
while openly appearing to be his opponent. These despised practices caused distrust of both pe’ilim
and hired employees.
_______________
Burns JM (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper.
Greenleaf RK (1977) Servant leadership. New York: Paulist Press.
6

7. Innovative Involved Thomas Created Local High-Trust Culture
However, the plant succeeded in four out of five of Shavit’s years because of shop floor managing
by knowledgeable Thomas (aged 36-40).
As a very experienced mechanic (since the age of 14) and certified practical engineer, Thomas held
primary source knowledge and interactional expertise (Collins & Evens 2007), as well as relevant
phronesis, Greek for practical wisdom (Townley 2002). He became involved in employees’ problem-
solving, exposed his ignorance in order to learn by questions and suggestions, gained their trust,
acquired much local know-how and achieved successes that sidetracked Avi. Moreover, he
enhanced a high-trust culture by rejecting any kind of dirty politics and low-moral practices which
were proposd to him by the shop steward and others. This enhanced his own credibility and trust
relations among the hired employees, and between them and the three pe’ilim who joined him and
followed his practices (below).
Servant transformational leadership enhanced a high-trust culture: Thomas modeled high-moral
commitment to tasks, working 15-18 hours a day in the high season (September-December) as
involvement took much of his time. He encouraged proposed innovations of subordinates by
carefully reviewing them and adopting successful ones, and he enhanced their learning in sessions
he convened for his two-hours lectures and discussions of ginning on Fridays afternoon.
__________________________
Collins H & Evens R (2007) Rethinking Expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Townley B (2002) Managing with modernity. Organization 9(4): 549-573.
7

8. Shavit’s Deputy Danton + Two Other Pe’ilim Helped Thomas’s Efforts
Shavit used capitalist autocratic practices which conformed to the low-trust surrounding culture.
Thomas’s successful conversion of shop floor’s low-trust culture into a high-trust one was
achieved by trustful collaboration with Shavit’s deputy Danton and two other pe’ilim who had
habituated such practices in previous kibbutz work places called `branches’.
Kibbutz branches were mostly small, some 5-12 workers and many of them had enjoyed high-
trust cultures since their managers often had commenced working in them at the age of 14-15,
three hours a day after high school, as Thomas had done in the garage, and became managers with
15-20 years experience. Used to branch camaraderie they continued it when becoming managers,
and when becoming pe’ilim some chose involvement in the plant, learned, became proficient and
supported Thomas’s effectiveness and efficiency efforts.
Shavit had no such experience of branch camaraderie as he had previously managed kibbutz
building projects by contractors who used hired labor; he himself did not manage workers.
The high-trust culture of employees sharing leadership was also enhanced by accessibility of
the four pe’ilim to hired employees: they were easily approached informally to receive and supply
information, to listen to complaints, work problems and suggestions as they were usually outside
their offices. Often both Danton and Thomas joined hired employees’ coffee breaks for informal
discussions of work problems in high-trust communities of practitioners (Orr 1996). All four pe’ilim
also used other egalitarian trustful practices that time limit prevents untangling.
______________
Orr J (1996). Talking About Machines. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.
8

9. Thomas Exit Due to Shavit’s Tripping and Conflict with Danton
In a short time, Thomas became a prime expert of cotton gin plants in Israel as efficiency and
effectiveness soared. Shavit benefitted: It seemingly proved his capability. But when Thomas
proposed developing and building an automatic cotton-feeder at one third the price offered by a
well-known American firm, US$80,000 instead of US$250,000, Shavit felt that it was too good to
be true and used red tape to prevent it.
A US$15,000 experiment was required to prove the machine’s feasibility and attend to
possible problems, but for three years, Shavit and his patron, the cooperative CEO deferred the
experiment despite Danton support of Thomas. Eventually it was conducted and succeeded, and
a local producer built the machine, but Thomas did not inaugurate it. He had resigned after the
machine was installed and proved successful, tired of conflicts with Shavit.
Another reason for his exit was a conflict with Danton about adding cleaning machines.
Cleaning fibers is a major concern of the industry, but experts were divided as to whether this
should be done mainly before or after separation of fibers from seeds. Expert Thomas favored
adding a machine before separation, but ignorant Danton and Shavit wanted the after separation
alternative. Thomas convinced the majority of the board of his view but lost Danton’s essential
support against despised distrusted Shavit and this encouraged his leaving.
9

10. Ignorant Managers’ Rule Returned and Cancelled the High-Trust Culture
Shavit was ignorant of his own ignorance (Harvey et al. 2001); hence he nominated pa’il Avi,
Thomas’s deputy, as technical manager, missing Avi’s detachment that kept him ignorant. Avi soon
failed while ruining the high-trust culture: His efforts to conceal ignorance by detachment and
minimal communication brought secrecy back and much distrust; nor did employees trust Shavit
and Danton who refused to replace Avi despite his obvious failures, causing them ample superfluous
hard work.
Avi sought outside experts’ help, but nevertheless failed to solve the prime problem with a new
machine he himself had chosen, causing a loss of 20% of ginning capacity.
High-trust culture disappeared also because Avi’s authority collapsed. His orders were ignored as he
lost Shavit’s backing: Shavit unofficially collaborated with the shop steward who took Avi’s place,
and managed the shop floor. Uneducated, quite ignorant and selfish, he was despised and
distrusted by most employees both because of his egotism and his collaboration with Shavit. Only
foremen and a few other veterans trusted him as he obtained privileges for them from Shavit.
Low-trust culture returned: Everyone kept his cards close to his chest, filtering information
according to his aims and interests and managers were mostly detached and unavailable for
communication with the staff. The other pe’ilim stopped joining Danton’s fewer informal
discussions with hired staff, which were largely useless as animosity and distrust reigned between
pe’ilim and hired staff.
__________________
Harvey et al. (2001). A historic perspective on organizational ignorance. Journal of Managerial
Psychology, 16(5/6): 449-68.
10

11. Discussion and Conclusions
Servant transformational leadership of managers with relevant knowledge, phronesis and
habituses of involvement and credible, open and trustful relations with employees had enhanced
informal democracy in which employees contributed to management and leadership in a high-
trust culture, engendering successful problem-solving, decision-making, learning and innovation.
This culture existed within the context of the encompassing low-trust FO culture and under
ignorant superiors with contrary habituses who concealed ignorance by detachment while using
low-moral seductive/coercive controls. It eixsted despite obstacles posed by leaders who
preferred low-trust cultures habituated in previous offices (more proofs in the full paper).
The high-trust culture proved elusive as no one explicitly sought to create it, and its elimination
was analogous. It was created without any formal changes and similarly disappeared. Two middle
managers led its creation when taking charge, while the succession of one of them by a manager
who preferred low-trust secrecy and minimal involvement was enough to cancel it, while both
opposing cultures decisively impacted plant’s functioning.
The high-trust culture was created by pe’ilim who habituated high-trust kibbutz branch cultures,
preferring trustful cooperative involvement instead of autocratic detachment and low-trust,
seductive/coercive practices. Another major reason for this preference was their relevant
knowledge and phronesis which promised success after they had exposed their ignorance, which
made their authority vulnerable but enhanced trust and enabled learning. The high-trust culture
they created gave less educated but expert hired employees fair opportunities for contributing to
the plant’s problem-solving, decision making and innovating.
11

12. Authors assert that character and talent are more important than specialized knowledge and skills
when hiring staff (e.g., Collins 2003: Ch. 3; Meyer 2011: 63), but relevant knowledge and proper
habitus have proved more important by influencing managers’ choice of either involvement or
detachment, initiating either a high- or low-trust cycle (Fox 1974), either a virtuous ascending trust
process or its opposite (e.g., Heskett 2012; Vlaar et al. 2007):
Virtuous ascending trust process versus Vicious descending trust process
Involvement habitus + relevant Detachment habitus + little or no any
knowledge and phronesis relevant knowledge and phronesis
↓ ↓
Involvement choice Detachment choice
↓ ↓
Vulnerable ignorance exposure Concealing ignorance by detachment
causes an ascending trust spiral causes a descending trust spiral
↓ ↓
Openness & knowledge sharing Secrecy retains ignorance, causes mistaken
enhances learning & right decisions decisions, and/or decision avoidance
↓ ↓
Servant transformational leadership Low-moral failing management depresses
enhances commitment & OCB commitment & work motivation
↓ ↓
Effective functioning encourages Conservatism spares some mistakes but
innovations, & more successes causes brain-drain, mistakes & failures
↓ ↓
High-trust culture Low-trust culture
12

13. The field’s mix of high- and low-trust local cultures impacted managers’ habituses, intangible
resources and choices of courses of action and career tracks that affected the creation/
elimination of high-trust cultures by impacting trust levels between and within hierarchic ranks.
Culture and trust are problematic concepts; hence, conflicting research findings helped to miss
high-trust culture elusiveness and its decisive impact on employees’ contributing to problem-
solving and decision-making. In a highly specialized organization, a truly effective manager is
involved and exposes ignorance despite a possible negative impact on his personal authority,
becoming vulnerable, trusting employees’ capabilities and learns from them and with them.
Every organization is susceptible to managers’ tendencies to choose low-trust practices that
are easier to use and whose impact is clearer and immediate. Formal democratic management
which scholars recommend today (e.g., Cloke & Goldsmith 2002) cannot assure high-trust cultures
without informal managerial democracy engendered by involved knowledgeable managers who
aim at trustful relationships. This requires mechanisms that encourage managers’ efforts to
create high-trust cultures. One mechanism must solve the oligarchic tendency of tenured
successful leaders (Michels, 1959[1915]. For a proposal: Shapira 2010). Another must solve the
problem of participants’ differential competences in order to discern impostors from genuine
potential leaders among managerial candidates. A third mechanism must solve the problem of
fair and just representation of subordinates in decision-making bodies.
_________________
Cloke K & Goldsmith J (2002) The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Shapira, Reuven (2010) ‘Retaining Creativity in Large Co-operatives by Timely Democratic
Succession of leaders’. Journal of Co-operative Studies 43(3): 29-40.
13