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The Passive-Aggressive
Organization
by Gary L. Neilson, Bruce A. Pasternack,
and Karen E. Van Nuys
Its a place where more energy
is put into thwarting things
than starting them, but in the
nicest way. A startling
percentage of companies,
especially large, established
ones, display the symptoms.
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This article is made available to you with compliments of Booz Allen Hamilton. Further posting, copying, or distributing is
copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www.hbr.org or call 800-988-0886
The Passive-Aggressive
Organization
by Gary L. Neilson, Bruce A. Pasternack,
and Karen E. Van Nuys
harvard business review * october 2005 page 1
COPYRIGHT © 2005 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Its a place where more energy is put into thwarting things than
starting them, but in the nicest way. A startling percentage of
companies, especially large, established ones, display the symptoms.
Healthy companies are hard to mistake. Their
managers have access to good, timely information,
the authority to make informed decisions,
and the incentives to make them on behalf of
the organization, which promptly and capably
carries them out. A good term for the healthiest
of such organizations is “resilient,” since they
can react nimbly to challenges and recover
quickly from those they cannot dodge. Unfortunately,
most companies are not resilient. In fact,
fewer than one in five of the approximately
30,000 individuals who responded to a global
online survey Booz Allen Hamilton conducted
describe their organizations that way.
The largest
number–over one-quarter–say they suffer
from the cluster of pathologies we place under
the label “passive-aggressive. The category
takes its name from the organizations quiet but
tenacious resistance, in every way but openly,
to corporate directives.
In passive-aggressive organizations, people
pay those directives lip service, putting in only
enough effort to appear compliant. Employees
feel free to do as they see fit because there are
hardly ever unpleasant consequences, and the
directives themselves are often misguided and
thus seem worthy of defiance. Making matters
worse, senior management has left unclear
where accountability actually lies, in effect absolving
managers of final responsibility for
anything they do. Those with initiative must
wait interminably for a go-ahead, and their actions
when finally taken are accompanied by a
chorus of second-guessing, a poor but understandable
substitute for the satisfaction of accomplishing
the task at hand. (See the exhibit
“What Kind of Company Is Yours?”)
When employees healthy impulses–to
learn, to share, to achieve–are not encouraged,
other harmful but adaptive conduct
gradually takes over. It is no wonder that action
of any kind becomes scarce and that
erstwhile doers find safety in resisting unpromising
efforts. The absence of confrontation
at such places is only a disguise for
intransigence.
As a general rule, companies that are not
healthy suffer from either too much control at
This article is made available to you with compliments of Booz Allen Hamilton. Further posting, copying, or distributing is
copyright infringement. To order more copies go to www.hbr.org or call 800-988-0886
The Passive-Aggressive Organization
harvard business review * october 2005 page 2
Gary L. Neilson
(neilson_gary@bah
.com) is a senior vice president in the
Chicago office of Booz Allen Hamilton,
a management consulting firm. Formerly
a Booz Allen senior vice president,
Bruce A. Pasternack
(bpasternack@
specialolympics.org) is now serving as
president