We live in an era of turbulence as our assumptions of institutional stability are challenged. Typically, we are reminded with the headlines of our morning newspapers that particular institutions or their agents are the fault. From the patently illegal misrepresentation of Madoff to the squeaky clean optimization by financial organizations of their own bottom lines, by selling off risky assets. Either way, the larger system trembles under destabilization.

The agents of our headlines are our scapegoats. Surely, turbulence is awful; but at least if we know who’s to blame, we retain our surety: we hold onto the fiction that we understand when we do not. We assign blame to the scapegoat and like the biblical prototype, cheer at his demise among the crags and rocks of a harsh landscape.

But we forget that the biblical scapegoat had a local parallel—sacrificed before our eyes within Temple ritual. Unfortunately, so do we.

Increasingly, over the last months, through discussion with colleagues, we’ve begun to see an ugly pattern of organizational corrosion within smaller, local institutions. Perhaps representative of this historical moment, when received wisdom is questioned in its role of providing clear direction, the cases we’ve studied have been organizations based in the provision of expert knowledge.

We have observed that a 4-step process has emerged, revealing institutional corrosion; but that the traditional Oz-like disclaimer, “pay no attention to that man behind the screen” no longer works. In fact, the organization stands humiliated as it continues forward, covering its tracks; but its client is keenly aware of the organization’s incapacity. It is in the client’s clear recognition that the organization itself has failed (rather than the client) that the changed relationship stands revealed.

There are 4 steps. The first is an invitation by the organization to an external candidate— say student, colleague, or another specialized organization —- to collaborate. The second is an agreement reached on the conditions of collaboration. The third is the host organization’s unannounced change of conditions through some form of misrepresentation. The fourth is the breaking-off of the deal by the external candidate, with a recognition that something not quite right, or corrosive has transpired.

What really has happened is that trust in local authority has been undermined through organizational anxiety. Where in the past, such collaborations either proceeded smoothly or were broken off for clear cause, the present model emerges through an organization’s anxiety about its own stability and value. In one case, for example, an academic appointment was extended— but to a different (and less desirable) department than was originally negotiated; in another, a consulting collaboration was extended— but only after the consultancy group tendered a significant monetary sum to the larger organization.

Unfortunately, because no reflection occurs within the organization after the fissure, knowledge of corrosion inheres only for the client or customer.

Without quite getting it immediately, the external world becomes slowly mindful of organizational corrosion at a local level, as our organizations lumber anxiously to their own dissolution.

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