The Cohesion Trap: Why Declining Organizations Suppress Dissent
A natural but counterproductive reaction
One of the paradoxes of organizational life is that the qualities that help create strong communities can also contribute to decline when taken too far.
During periods of membership loss, financial stress, internal conflict, or ideological division, organizational leaders often become fearful about the future. Faced with uncertainty, many organizations instinctively circle the wagons. Leaders emphasize unity, cohesion, and loyalty while working to minimize conflict, debate, and public disagreement. The goal is understandable: prevent further division and preserve the organization.
However, this strategy often produces the opposite result. Efforts to preserve unity by suppressing dissent and open debate can accelerate longterm membership loss and organizational decline. Members who raise difficult questions and challenge prevailing assumptions may feel unwelcome, ignored, and pressured into silence. Some become frustrated and leave, while others disengage. Those who leave are often among the organization’s strongest critical thinkers and most forward-looking members. Over time, the organization loses many of the very people most capable of identifying problems, proposing solutions, and helping ensure its long-term vitality and success.
Community, trust, and cohesion are important strengths of any healthy organization. Human beings are social creatures who naturally seek belonging and shared purpose. Organizations cannot function without a degree of cooperation, loyalty, and mutual support. However, organizational scholars have long warned that cohesion can become excessive.
Social psychologists Irving Janis and Jonathan Haidt documented that when organizations prioritize harmony over open disagreement and suppress dissent and contrary viewpoints in the name of unity, they become increasingly vulnerable to conformity, self-censorship, poor decision-making, and serious mistakes.
Another consequence is that leadership selection becomes distorted. During periods of decline and uncertainty, organizations often favor leaders who are seen as unifying, loyal, and committed to maintaining harmony. While these qualities have value, individuals who question assumptions, identify systemic problems, confront uncomfortable realities, and advocate significant change are viewed as disruptive and divisive and kept out of leadership. Ironically, this often occurs precisely when organizations most need bold, independent leadership.
History provides many examples. Kodak clung to its film business and suppressed warnings about digital photography. Sears sidelined executives pushing for radical change amid the rise of Amazon. Mainline Protestant denominations experienced steep membership declines while becoming intolerant of internal theological and political dissent. Rather than encouraging debate about underlying problems, leaders dismissed dissenters as disloyal and disruptive. The decline of many once-dominant corporations, newspapers, and religious organizations shows how preserving internal consensus prevents necessary adaptation.
This tendency is particularly ironic in organizations that define themselves as open, diverse, and intellectually vibrant. Universities, liberal churches, civic organizations, professional associations, and similar institutions often proclaim commitments to free inquiry, open debate, freedom of expression, and the consideration of diverse viewpoints. Yet during periods of stress, decline, and internal conflict, they can become surprisingly dogmatic and coercive. These organizations can sacrifice their foundational principles in the name of preserving unity and stability.
This dynamic creates a self-reinforcing cycle. As dissent declines and the organization becomes more homogeneous, outsiders increasingly perceive it as narrow, conformist, and resistant to criticism. For organizations that publicly celebrate diversity, inclusion, free inquiry, and democratic participation, the gap between stated ideals and observed behavior is especially damaging. Newcomers do not encounter a diverse community of independent thinkers but a socially and ideologically uniform group that expects conformity. Many conclude that the organization does not practice the openness it advertises and decide not to join.
In the short term, circling the wagons can create the appearance of stability. Conflict is reduced, leaders are protected from criticism, and members avoid uncomfortable conversations. Yet the underlying problems remain. Membership may continue to decline, financial pressures may worsen, public credibility erodes, and dissatisfaction continues to grow beneath the surface. The organization becomes more cohesive internally while becoming less capable of understanding why it is struggling.
Ironically, the people most likely to recognize and address systemic problems are often among the first to be pushed out or leave. Reformers, innovators, and members willing to challenge assumptions often become frustrated by the organization’s reluctance to engage difficult questions. When these people depart, the organization loses valuable knowledge, experience, creativity, and institutional memory. The remaining membership becomes mediocre and even more homogeneous in outlook.
The solution is to create an organizational culture that can constructively handle open debate and diverse viewpoints. Organizations must actively teach members about the dangers of groupthink, encourage intellectual humility, and foster habits of respectful disagreement and active listening. The problem is not disagreement and conflicting opinions, but that members lack the skills and culture needed to engage disagreement productively. Healthy organizations recognize that open debate and viewpoint diversity, when managed constructively, are strengths not threats.
Strong organizations recognize that community and truth-seeking are not opposing values. Cohesion should support the organization’s mission and principles, not replace them. Open debate, intellectual diversity, free expression, and honest self-examination are essential organizational tools for identifying problems, correcting mistakes, and adapting to changing circumstances.
Yes. As is to often the case, heightened anxiety leads to behaviors that increase threats rather than deal with them thoughtfully and effectively.
One corrective is diversity of thought, which privileges individuals doing their own thinking, open-minded dialogue, and thoughtful problem-solving in the context of a shared mission. This is an effort to balance the biologically rooted forces of individuality and togetherness and to address anxiety triggers in ways that are not self-defeating.
Natural Systems Theory as developed by Bowen and applied to religious communities by Friedman and Steinke describes these dynamics comprehensively. Healthy Congregations is an organization that helps congregations to address these issues, and many other systems oriented coaches do as well.
This article certainly applies to the UUA. The groupthink and censorship are often explicit. For example, favored individuals and groups can accuse others of being "out-of-covenant" or the like, without consequence, while those, like Todd Eklof, who dare to raise legitimate issues about the tactics or ideology of those who are favored, may be dealt with harshly and without due process. Today, when the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC), removes a minister from fellowship with generic accusations of bullying and violations of the UUMA code of conduct, one never knows if the purported misconduct was real or if the minister may have been resisting prejudice, bigotry, or misconduct by a well-connected or vengeful accuser.
A few weeks back such accusations against a minister were published to justify his removal, without any hint as to the validity of the evidence or of due process. To my mind there should have been an automatic appeal to an independent, expert review panel, paid for by the UUA but beholden to a much broader societal entity.
The generic accusations against this minister reminded me of the well-documented and well-founded accusations against a minister several years ago. In that case the MFC took no action against the minister, likely because she was a young, female, progressive, and very articulate and personable. This lack of action was notable because the sermon, which misrepresented and denigrated Todd Eklof, and subsequent actions by her that were denounced by others, led to the breakup of a congregation.
Later she broadcast to the internet a similar unwarranted attack on an organization which has defended Eklof's right-of-critique. As a board member of that organization, I read the code of conduct in detail and prepared a lengthy and explicit report documenting her unethical behavior and submitted it to the MFC. Though this behavior didn't rise to a "level of concern" for the MFC, the word spread through the grapevine, and she has only been employed as chaplain since.