In organisational strategic subcultures the decision elite / leadership may have different ranked grand preferences to its followers. Ridley Scott’s film Alien (1979) dramatises this two-level game of principal-agent and moral hazard risks in the revelation that the Weyland-Yutani Corporation’s priority is to retrieve the alien xenomorph for its weapons division, and the USCSS Nostromo crew are considered expendable.
The Nostromo crew evoke the MacLeod-Gervais-Rao-Church model of role power dynamics in organisations. Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) are Losers: low-level employees who argue with other crew members about bonuses. The rest of the crew are largely Clueless: Kane (John Hurt) puts the crew at risk when he ventures into a derelict alien spacecraft; navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) is a dedicated worker who becomes emotionally unstable; and captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) makes bad risk management decisions. Science officer Ash (Ian Holm) is a Sociopath who is aware of Special Order 937 and hides this agenda until Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) discovers it. Ripley transforms from Clueless to possible Sociopath near Alien‘s end and becomes a Sociopath in James Cameron’s sequel Aliens (1986).
Special Order 937 is a powerful narrative-like metaphor that has wider applicability. It depicts the potential breakdown or fraying of employer-employee relations in circumstances of disruptive industry change, distressed debt, and organisational restructures. The MacLeod-Gervais-Rao-Church model predicts that Sociopaths will externally transfer the negative risks to Clueless and Loser employees – whilst simultaneously covering this up through selective framing / interpretation of facts, policies, and procedures.
Awareness of Special Order 937 gives Clueless employees the opportunity to see the underlying Reality of the organisational strategic culture from the decision elite / leadership’s perspective (and perhaps from a whole-systems viewpoint). This provides some optionality and the potential to become more than Sociopath: a fully sovereign actor who is anti-fragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb).