The University as a Sociopath

Previously I wrote about the Loyalty Tax on Academic Staff. The idea being that staff who are loyal to the institution are not rewarded with loyalty, or good conditions, but instead exploited. This may be because, I suggest, the institution suffers from Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), commonly referred to as sociopathy. It may seem odd to attribute a human condition to an organisations. But organisations are legal persons, in that they can enter contracts, employ people & in the case of educational institutions shape the behaviour of their students. 

Organisations, like sociopaths, may lack empathy & seek to exploit people by manipulating their emotions for their own benefit. This can be seen in advertisements where organisations claim to care about their customers. Obviously an organisation can't really care and is using this marketing device to attract customers. The same can apply to the staff of universities: the university is not capable of caring about the staff, but pretending to do so may be cheaper than providing good wages and conditions. 

This is not to suggest universities are inherently evil. However, we should be careful not to project characteristics, such as care and empathy, ontio an organisation. Staff and students of universities need to carefully check what they are signing up for: what is it agreed they will get. Unwritten understandings are not worth the paper they are not written on. 

There have been numerous studies of ASPD amongst university leadership, such as Perry (2015) and Forster & Lund (2018). However these address the problems individuals can cause within an organisational structure, not the behaviour of the organization itself.

References

Forster, N., & Lund, D. W. (2018). Identifying and dealing with functional psychopathic behavior in higher education. Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 38(1), 22-31. https://doi.org/10.1002/joe.21897

Perry, C. (2015). The “dark traits” of sociopathic leaders: Could they be a threat to universities? The Australian Universities’ Review, 57(1), 17–25. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.306702837325703