Kiss up kick down

Kiss up kick down (or kiss up, kick down) is a neologism used to describe the situation where middle level employees in an organization are polite and flattering to superiors but abusive to subordinates. It is believed to have originated in the US, with the first documented use having occurred in 1993. The concept can be applied to any social interaction where one person believes they have power over another person or believes that another person has power over them.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists described Robert McNamara, an American business executive and the eighth United States Secretary of Defense, as a classic case of the kiss up, kick down personality in August 1993.

On day 2 of the Senate confirmation hearings, April 12, 2005, for John R. Bolton, a Bush nomination for the US representative to the UN, the Senate panel focused on allegations that Bolton pressured intelligence analysts. Former State Department intelligence chief Carl W. Ford Jr. characterized Bolton as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy", implying that he was always ready to please whoever had authority over him, while having very little regard for people working under him.

Calum Paton, Professor of Health Policy at Keele University, describes kiss up kick down as a prevalent feature of the UK National Health Service culture. He raised this point when giving evidence at the Stafford Hospital scandal public inquiry. Credit is centralised and blame devolved. "Kiss up kick down means that your middle level people will kiss-up, they will please their masters, political or otherwise, and they will kick down to blame somebody else when things go wrong."

For example, NHS Trust bosses are nervous of reporting deficits and seek to under-report until it's too late. They seek to please their political superiors in the short term and shift blame down the line.

Some systems theorists and management consultants, such as Gerald Weinberg, see the flow of blame in an organization as one of the most important indicators of that organization's robustness and integrity. Blame flowing downwards, from management to staff, or laterally between professionals, indicates organizational failure. In a blame culture, problem-solving is replaced by blame-avoidance. Weinberg emphasizes that blame coming from the top generates "fear, malaise, errors, accidents, and passive-aggressive responses from the bottom", with those at the bottom feeling powerless and lacking emotional safety.

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