BAD BOSSES BOO

THE more hostile or temperamental a boss, the less likely it will be that their juniors will relay bad news.

This can backfire, as shown by a study looking into the decline of Nokia, the Finnish telecoms company, between 2005 and 2010.

Fearing the hostile reactions of top managers, workers 'remained silent or provided optimistic filtered information' in strategy conversations. The engineers inability to voice concerns about Symbian Operating System ultimately led to Nokia's eclipse by Apple and Google.

One of the study's authors, Tino Vuori, an assistant professor of strategic management at Aalto University, points out that danger of hiding information - due to fear - is that it prevents the leader from making sound decisions.

It is not just the hostile or meddling managers from whom employees will hide information. It is also the hapless.

Despite espousing an 'open-door policy', most bosses do not receive the intelligence they need.

Andre Spicer, a professor of Organisational Behaviour at Cass Business School, says that most  senior managers are pretty clueless about what actually happens in their organisations.

''They spend far more time talking to external [audiences]  than finding out what is happening internally. The result is they give underlings lots of space to hide things [from] them.''

This might be for the best.

In one experiment conducted in a Chinese mobile phone factory by Harvard Business School, a curtain was erected around production lines. The result? The teams given privacy increased their productivity by up to 15 percent.

The researchers explained that the improvements came because the teams were able to experiment with new techniques away from the managers' watch.

The best bosses do not meddle, or slaughter the manager. But if you find yourself working for a bad one, deploy a bit of bosscon........HIDE.