What is the connection between leaders’morality and the output performance of organizations? Can their morality explain, through trust, continuity, and change of organizational cultures? Is periodic rotation of managers the right solution for the distrust caused by self‐serving conservatism due to Michels's “Iron Law of Oligarchy”? An anthropological study of kibbutzim, whose innovative and adaptive cultures declined recently, found that past success was dependent on high‐moral servant leaders who backed democracy and promoted high‐trust cultures that engendered innovation by creative officers in some kibbutzim, which others imitated. However, conservatism of continuous leaders as heads of low‐trust kibbutz federative organizations, which were ignored by customary kibbutz research, engendered oligarchization which rotation enhanced rather than prevented. However, creativity deteriorated only after decades of growing oligarchy, with the vanishing of the high‐moral old guard. Thus, the crux of democratic communal culture sustainability is pinpointed in the superiority of trusted, high‐moral leaders. A preliminary idea for achieving that aim, predicated on officers’continuation in office being conditional on periodic tests of trust, is herein presented.
Fresh blood", executive succession by outsiders, is widely used to enhance innovation. While it is quite clear that a nominee's competence is crucial to innovation, the exact causality is only partially understood. An anthropological study of the behaviours of a complete outsider and an industry-insider suggests they followed different strategies for taking charge. The complete outsider had meagre local knowhow, and relevant competence in industryproblems, making self-exposure difficult, preventing active personal involvement, and led to a failure in building trust. Without trust, a vicious circle of mutual suspicions prevented openness and sincerity, crucial to successful use of intangible assets for innovation. A spiral of conflict and efforts at coercion on both sides emerged, causing conservatism. The other outsider with some local knowhow was unafraid of self-exposure, got involved, created mutual trust, and succeeded. Thus a lack of specialized locally-relevant competence could explain the failure of a gifted complete outsider to innovate, in a situation in which a less talented industry-insider proved a successful leader of innovation. /
Aims of the study
Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is a hereditary, auto‐inflammatory disease, characterised by recurrent, self‐limiting attacks of fever with inflammation of the serosal membranes, joints, and skin. Chronic inflammation was previously associated with increased risk for ischaemic heart disease (IHD). However, the association between FMF and IHD remains unclear. The objective of this study is to determine whether this association exists.
Methods
Utilising the database of the largest health‐care provider in Israel, a cross‐sectional study was performed. The incidence of IHD was compared between patients diagnosed with FMF and age and sex‐matched controls. Chi‐square and t‐test were used for categorial and continuous variables, and cox logistics regression model was used for multivariate analysis. Survival analysis was made using Kaplan‐Meier plots and log‐rank test.
Results
The study included 7670 patients diagnosed with FMF and an equal number of controls without FMF. In a univariate analysis FMF was found to be associated with higher prevalence of IHD (OR 1.33) and increased mortality (OR 1.29). In a multivariate analysis FMF was found to be independently associated with increased risk for IHD (OR 1.44).
Conclusion
The study shows that FMF is associated with both increased risk for IHD and higher mortality rates. An early diagnosis and treatment of this disease can potentially improve patients’ life expectancy and decrease cardiac comorbidities.
Critics find that social sciences tend to comply with social domination by power elites, which is often low-moral, but the debate on public expectations of social scientists often misses this. The failed kibbutz research illuminates this problem: while supposedly abiding by such expectations, a dominant functionalist scientific coalition was co-opted by privileged old guard leaders and power elites for dozens of years to the public detriment. This coalition concealed leaders' and power elites' violations of kibbutz radical principles in inter-kibbutz organizations (hereafter I-KOs) by evading their study, and created a faked image of democracy and egalitarianism that enhanced academic success but helped conceal the pernicious conservative oligarchic hegemony of life-long I-KO leaders, harming efforts to overcome it. This eventually led to the demise of the kibbutz radical system, a failure that functionalists have failed to explain. The findings support critics of conformist social sciences while pointing to their Achilles heel, i.e., fallible survey research methods that call for new measures that minimize fallibility and the likelihood of co-opting social scientists by power elites, as well as measures that will maximize chances of exposing such scientific failures.
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