Month: October 2018

Open offices are popular and for good reason: they reduce cost and they have the potential to improve interaction (and eventually foster innovation and creativity). However their very design emphasizes the relationship of domination of senior managers over junior managers and employees (senior managers have closed offices, everybody else works outside), leads to performance-killing interruptions and support sexism and harassment. What is the alternative? Well, according to these ‘focus blinders‘, not co-working spaces. I personally love working in those nooks that you can find in libraries, where you can be on your own but also be with others in the same space.

After spending time with managers inside and outside their companies, I lost whatever little faith I had in the increasing drive towards Corporate Social Responsibility. For me, the most painful proof of how little companies care about values and doing good is the need to make performance arguments for human rights, such as gender equality. Would it be ok to discriminate against women if it was more profitable? Of course not. And yet, that argument continues to central to the fight for equality (just take a look at these citation counts).

And then there is this: a purely calculative approach to taking a stance on social issues: a tool to find out whether companies should do so or not.

My only hope is that a few of my students will escape the structural conditions pushing for unethical behavior (see my recent Organization Science piece about how powerful these can be).