I have just read what may be the most satisfying, most incisive academic study of the past century. It’s called You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation Within Organisations. Professor David Sims, who published it in the journal Organisation Studies, is head of the faculty of management at Cass Business School in London.
“Our patience with forming interpretations and reinterpretations of others’ behaviour is not unlimited,” writes Sims. “The time comes when we lose interest in trying to understand, and conclude that another person is behaving in a way that is simply unacceptable.
The internal discourse changes from one in which the other is ‘construed as behaving strangely’ or as ‘seeing the world differently’ or even as mistaken; the discourse becomes one in which they are ‘wrong’, ‘wicked’, ‘simply a bastard’ and should be treated as such.” ….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.