Unsolidary Collegiality

Collegiality is the form of togetherness that knows no obligation. It generates the expectation of solidarity and withholds it at the decisive moment. That is not a failure — that is its function.

I. The Distinction

Solidarity costs something. It demands standing up for someone when doing so risks something — one's own position, one's own comfort, one's own standing. Collegiality demands none of this. It demands only the form: the nod in the meeting, the friendly tone in the corridor, the shared lunch. The form without the content.

The word "colleague" derives from the Latin collega — one who was elected together, who holds the same office, who belongs to the same body. It describes a structural membership, not a personal bond. Colleagues are people who happen to share a corridor, a job title, an employer. Nothing more.

Unsolidary collegiality exploits precisely this gap. It presents itself as more than it is — as connection, as shared interest, as mutual reliability. Until the moment when this connection would cost something. Then it reveals what it was: a performance.

II. The Internal Variant: Strategic Silence

Inside organisations, unsolidary collegiality takes a specific form. The internal colleague does not object. He does not sabotage openly. He runs no campaign against the idea or the person. That would be too costly and too risky — it would expose him, make enemies, create accountability.

He is silent. Strategically, precisely, consequentially.

In the meeting he nods — or says nothing that could count as objection. In the decision round he does not mention the idea, does not forward it, does not recommend it. When asked, he finds "open questions", "need for clarification", "too early". The sum of these non-actions produces an effective blockade — without a no ever being spoken, without accountability ever arising.

The mechanism behind this is the NIbyM syndrome — Not Invented by Me. The threat is not the idea itself, but what accepting it would mean: that someone else saw something he did not. That his own contribution is relativised. That change arises which he does not control. NIbyM disguises itself as professional caution. It is ego-protection.

Nobody needs to lie. The "technical reservations" are often correct. But they are presented selectively — the advantages systematically suppressed, the risks systematically emphasised. That is not analysis. That is defence.

What makes internal silence so effective is that it is unassailable. One cannot indict a silence. One cannot prove a non-action as sabotage. The colleague who never voted against the idea but also never stood up for it has formally done nothing wrong. He has merely cultivated collegiality and withheld solidarity.

The result is what Dr. Erich Häußer, former president of the German Patent Office, called the "cartel of ignorance." No agreement, no minutes, no evidence. Only the sum of individual decisions that together form a wall — and each individual stone of this wall is entirely unremarkable.

III. The Active Variant: The Intrigue

Strategic silence is the passive form of unsolidary collegiality. There is a more active, more dangerous variant — and it is harder to recognise because it hides more deeply behind the façade of collegiality.

The intrigue is never conducted openly. It knows no direct confrontation, no nameable enmity, no speakable conflict. It works through instruments that all share the same characteristic: individually they appear harmless; in their effect they are precisely destructive.

The deliberate spreading of confidential information is the most effective of these instruments. The information is real — that makes it irrefutable. It is confidential — that makes its disclosure a breach of trust disguised as concern. "I'm only saying this because I'm worried..." — and then follows the detail that makes someone appear in a different light. Not as a lie, but as selective truth. Selective truths are more effective than lies because they cannot be refuted.

Casting someone in the "right light" follows the same logic. It needs no invented fact — only the right framing of the right fact at the right moment with the right person. The colleague who made a mistake — who doesn't know about that? What matters is when this mistake is mentioned, in what context, with what undertone. Praise with a built-in reservation is the most refined form: "He's really good — but you know how he can be sometimes." The listener becomes curious. A question arises where none existed before. The damage is sown without a concrete accusation having been made.

Sawing at a colleague's chair is the systematised process of these individual actions. It is not a single act — it is a campaign without a campaign resolution, a strategy without a written plan. Each individual action is deniable: a concerned hint, a passing mention, a silence at the wrong moment. The sum of these actions produces an image — and the intriguer has designed the image without ever holding a brush.

What makes the intrigue so difficult to challenge is the structural asymmetry between attack and defence. Those who intrigue need no evidence — they sow doubt. Those who defend must prove something that was never explicitly claimed. One cannot refute a rumour that was never formulated as a rumour. One cannot dispel a mistrust whose source is invisible. The defence makes the attacked person visible; the attacker remains invisible.

Silence harms through omission. The intrigue harms through action. Both use collegiality as cover. The difference: silence lets someone fall. The intrigue pushes them.

In organisations under pressure — with scarce resources, limited advancement, unclear decision structures — the intrigue is not an exception. It is a standard instrument of position-securing. Those who do not master it are at a disadvantage against those who do. Those who master it do not call it intrigue — they call it political acumen, network management, strategic communication.

IV. The Collective Escalation: Mobbing

The intrigue is the work of an individual. When it falls on fertile ground — when others join in, remain silent, look away, or follow — something new emerges: mobbing. The collective, systematic, sustained variant of unsolidary collegiality.

Mobbing needs no agreement. That is the decisive point. It does not arise through a resolution, a secret arrangement, a plan. It arises through the sum of individual decisions that all point in the same direction — because the system provides a direction. Someone begins the intrigue. Others notice which way the wind is blowing. The rational ones join in, because joining is safer than contradiction. The opportunists exploit the situation. The fearful remain silent. The result is a collective process for which no one is responsible — and which destroys nonetheless.

What distinguishes mobbing from incidental hostility is its infrastructure. Collegiality provides it: the shared network, the common communication channels, the social rituals from which the target is systematically excluded. The invitation that does not arrive. The meeting whose time was "forgotten" to pass on. The laughter that stops when one enters the room. The information that goes to everyone — except one person. These individual actions are not provable. Their sum is devastating.

Collegiality is not only the infrastructure — it is the legitimation. The group that mobs defines itself as the community of the normal, the reliable, the right. The target is not presented as a victim but as a disruptive factor, a difficult person, someone who "doesn't fit the team." This reframing is precise: it shifts the perpetrator-victim relation by describing the group's behaviour as a reaction to the target's behaviour. The group does not exclude — the target excludes himself.

Towards the outsider — the inventor, the freelancer, the consultant — mobbing takes a specific form. The outsider has no formal membership to lose. What he loses is subtler: the willingness to cooperate, the referral, the reputation in the network. Information about him is spread — not as open criticism, but as a concerned insinuation. "One hears things." "Others have had bad experiences with him too." Where these experiences come from, who "one" is, what exactly was heard — that remains in the dark. The dark is the weapon.

The escalation logic is now complete: strategic silence lets someone fall. The intrigue pushes them. Mobbing organises the fall — collectively, systematically, with the social infrastructure of collegiality as lever.

In all three stages the form is the same: collegiality. The content is the opposite. That is not a contradiction — that is the principle. The form of togetherness is the most effective tool of exclusion, because it creates the expectation that is then broken.

V. The External Variant: False Eye Level

Towards the outsider — the inventor, the freelancer, the independent expert — unsolidary collegiality takes a different, more treacherous form.

The outsider is not treated as a stranger. That would be too obvious. He is treated as a colleague — as someone who speaks the same language, shares the same values, communicates as an equal. "We are both engineers." "I understand exactly what you mean." "That is an interesting approach." The language of connection is produced, carefully and convincingly.

This apparent equality is the trap. It creates an expectation that structurally cannot be fulfilled, because the outsider is never part of the system. He has no budgets, no decision-making power, no internal allies. He has only what he brings — his idea, his process, his decades of work. And he has the trust that the performed collegiality has created.

The sequence is predictable. Initial contacts: interest, questions, appointments. Then the assessment phase: the organisation examines what the outsider has. It evaluates whether it fits, whether it is useful, whether it disturbs or confirms the internal power structure. And then — when the result of the assessment is negative or too uncomfortable — the performed collegiality ends. Abruptly, wordlessly. The courtesy appeared genuine, until it was no longer needed.

What makes the outsider particularly vulnerable is the nature of what he brings. He does not bring a product that can be bought or rejected. He brings an idea that he has developed himself — often over years, often at considerable personal cost. The rejection therefore does not only hit the business transaction. It hits the person.

And the performed collegiality makes it worse. Had he been treated as a stranger from the start, the expectation would not have arisen. The false eye level creates the height of the fall.

VI. The Asymmetry of Risk

The decisive structural difference between the internal colleague and the outsider is the distribution of risk. The internal colleague who stands up for an external idea risks something: his status, his relationships with other internal actors, possibly his career. The risk of standing up is real and personally felt.

The risk of not standing up is, by contrast, zero. Nobody is criticised for not having forwarded an external innovation. Nobody has to explain why he let an idea disappear. The asymmetry is complete: solidarity is penalised, unsolidarity is risk-free.

Under these conditions, unsolidary collegiality is not weakness of character — it is rational behaviour. The system produces it because it rewards it. Those who act consistently in solidarity in such structures pay a personal price that the system does not compensate. Over time, what prevails is what is risk-free.

That is the actual diagnosis: not the individual failure, but the structure that makes individual failure a rational strategy.

VII. The Forms of Non-Engagement

Unsolidary collegiality manifests in a series of characteristic patterns, all of which achieve the same thing: maintaining the appearance of connection while withholding the connection.

Forwarding into the void — the idea is "passed upwards", to a place where one knows nothing will happen with it. The form of support is fulfilled, the content is hollowed out. The outsider believes his concern is being processed. It is buried.

Praise without consequence — "That is really interesting, we should look at that more closely." The sentence creates an expectation. The expectation is never fulfilled. Nobody looks at anything more closely. The praise was courtesy, not a commitment — and those who do not understand this have not learned the rules of the game.

Responsibility diffusion — "That should really be colleague X's remit, or department Y, or actually it would be more of a topic for Z." The idea travels through the system, losing energy at every step, and in the end nobody is responsible — which means nobody wanted to be responsible.

The time game — assessments are announced, appointments made, feedback promised. The deadlines are not met, the appointments postponed, the feedback never given. The system uses time as a weapon: most ideas do not die through a no, but through exhaustion.

VIII. What Remains

Unsolidary collegiality is not a German phenomenon and not a phenomenon of engineering culture. It is a universal characteristic of organisations under pressure — and organisations are always under pressure. It is found in universities, in administrations, in media editorial offices, in NGOs, in political parties. Everywhere that people work in structures that reward conformity and penalise individual initiative, the same dynamic arises.

What makes it particularly pronounced in Germany is the combination of hierarchical organisational culture, low error tolerance, and what Häußer called the cartel of ignorance. The structures are not configured such that solidarity would be possible — they are configured such that solidarity is irrational.

The outsider who does not understand this pays the price. He took the performed collegiality for real. He believed that professional competence and shared language create a basis for reliability. He overlooked the fact that collegiality and solidarity are two different things — and that the system systematically produces the one without the other.

Unsolidary collegiality is the cartel of silence from within and capitalist courtesy from without — both use the form of togetherness as a tool of distance. The difference: capitalist courtesy makes no promises. Collegiality makes them — and does not keep them.

That is the sharper injury. Not the system that reveals itself as cold. The system that performs warmth — and is cold.