Corporate Challenge : Scapegoating in IT

Scapegoating seems to be a common human behavior and is usually linked with tribalism–the irrational identification of a particular group as superior to all others and yet threatened by all others so that it needs aggressive protection from others. This blame game is one of mankind's oldest rituals next only to prostitution. It’s an almost unconscious behavior that gets employed when unit of people lacks cohesion, and a common identity and purpose. Find a scapegoat- and everyone can come together around this reason for the problems they are experiencing and the ills that they are unable to constructively address together. It helps a group to reframe themselves as “us” against “her” “him” or “them.”

If I can quote the Bible, Scapegoat is a live goat over whose head Aaron confessed all the sins of the children of Israel on the Day of Atonement. The goat, symbolically bearing their sins, was then sent into the wilderness.

In most of mankind's history, one of our more destructive tendencies has been the need to find easy scapegoats whenever our lives become difficult. This is a process that the more radical leaders in each era have found very useful. It enables the few in power to distract the majority's attention away from the true causes of their distress, which is almost always the leaders themselves, and onto whatever minority these leaders believe are currently distrusted or disliked or that they can convince the many to distrust or dislike. The usual victims the leaders choose are the weak or defenseless or simply the minorities

Ancient societies often kept official scapegoats, animals or humans who would be sacrificed after disaster in the hope of purifying the community and avoiding further punishment from the gods. The human scapegoats might be convicted criminals or suffer from a physical deformity that set them apart. They would be marched through the city in fine robes, as the people's sins were cast upon them, before being taken outside the walls and stoned to death.

Today, we might have moved on from such barbarism, but we still express the same urges in different ways. We've seen this happen increasingly during the current economic crisis. We still yell for blood after disaster and we invariably look for someone whom we can hold responsible for something usually far beyond the power of a single being. It’s a common human penchant for people to convince themselves that they are the cause of the good things but try to assign blame to others when things go wrong. Somebody said it well in Hindi…’Tum karo toh Raas leela, hum kare toh character dheela!’. Basically it’s an ego defense mechanism. Such negative coworkers sap your time and attention with their negative comments about the people, the workplace, the company, and their work. When these coworkers exude negativity, one is forced into coping with their negativity daily and the only way out is to have a thick skin that keeps negativity from affecting you.

When we discover that it is no longer socially acceptable to scapegoat one group, we turn our scapegoating behavior towards a group it is acceptable to hate, demean, ridicule, marginalize and harm. It seems necessary for us to have such “others” and to act towards some of them so. It makes us feel better. We feel like we are solving problems we don’t know how to solve. But, of course, scapegoating doesn’t really solve anything.

Though I’m very unsure, my suspicions on the root cause of this problem in our world of IT could be - corporate greed or the lack of time to look for answers or that the actual problem could be too tough to find a solution for or lack of spine to be accountable for the debacle. Whatever be the reason, the time is long past to grow up and stop the never ending search for someone to blame for our troubles and to finally become involved with searching, instead, for the truth. We must learn to look past the noticeable differences in physical appearance, and to value who someone is as a person, rather than judge them because they belong to a certain sociological group.

Addressing such situations isn’t easy because you’re presumed at fault of whatever problem you’ve been accused of creating. But what I can recommend is to stick to the facts and not start making excuses. Be straight forward and say that this person is blaming me and it wasn’t my fault because of whatever reasons. It wasn’t in my area of responsibility, or it was out of my control. The best defense, though, is to avoid being made a scapegoat in the first place. If you know of a situation that could lead to scapegoating, make sure everyone around you knows your responsibilities and the limits of your span of control. To conclude, you also need to be on the lookout for people that throw stones. It’s a challenge to handle these back stabbers but certainly not impossible as I always think that there are some people with some sensible thinking out there.