ABSTRACT
‘Collusion,’ “a secret agreement between two or more parties for a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful purpose, from the Latin collu-sio-… to collude” (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 2006), is infamous, and can be found in descriptions at various times in history: during the Roman Empire at slave auctions when nobles colluded in price fixing to outbid the state (Hopkins 1981); in accounts of medieval guilds who secured rents for their members at the cost of outsiders (Dessí and Ogilvie 2004); and more recently in corporate financial scandals where organizational dealings resulted in significant investor losses. In the literature collusion has typically received a strong negative connotation and is associated with clandestine behaviors and especially self-interest (Li 2009; Zarkada-Fraser 2000). It involves deception, the manipulation of information, rule breaking, covert tactics, masked intentions, fraudulent secret understandings (Turner 1987), and most of all, personal gain (Hubbell, Chory-Assad, and Medved 2005). However, we argue that there is a positive side to collusion. Positive collusion involves behind-the-scenes, secret activities involving two or more parties who work to help, protect, and/or grow the organization, but these activities are nonetheless in contravention of established organizational norms and procedures and often require individuals to work across internal organizational boundaries—the vertical functional boundaries or the horizontal hierarchical boundaries.
