MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How to (Inadvertently) Sabotage Your Organization

In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Central Intelligence Agency’s predecessor — headed by legendary William “Wild Bill” Donovan — put together a secret field manual for sabotaging enemy organizations. The manual encouraged “simple acts” of destruction that required no special training, tools, or equipment, with minimal “danger of injury, detection, and reprisal,” and that, crucially, could be executed by “ordinary citizens.” The OSS identified two ways of undermining an organization: physical damage to equipment, facilities, transportation, and means of production; and human obstruction of organizational and managerial processes, leading to “faulty decisions and noncooperation.” Both ways targeted the productivity of a company. Lowering employee morale — organizational sabotage — was considered as effective at slowing down an organization’s output as pouring sand into the lubrication systems of its machines.

About the Author

Stefan Thomke is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

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