On organizational behavior, behavioral economics, HR strategy, and the structural causes of organizational self-deception.
Mass layoffs are terrible. For the people who get laid off, obviously. But also for those who stay. When companies wage what should be a respectful breakup with the employee factions they no…
When it comes to examining cases of organizational self-deception, the Boeing 737 MAX situation has it all. Two crashes between 2018 and 2019, organizational and legal fall-out extending into 20twenty-four. Never before…
Organizational research on what leads people to be selected as leaders has shown consistently that charisma, defined broadly as the ability to come across as confident, warm, and big-picture focused…
Quiet quitting burst into the popular consciousness of organizations around mid-2022. The phenomenon stuck around through 2024 as a frequent topic of management books and articles. The framing I saw most often…
When an employee raises a concern that proves, in retrospect, to have been accurate, organizations reliably engage in a particular retrospective reconstruction. The employee, they will say, was difficult. Prone…
Laurence Peter published his principle in 1969. Fifty-three years later, the research literature continues to confirm it. Employees are routinely promoted to positions that require skills they do not have,…
The return-to-office mandates that proliferated through 2022 and into 2023 were almost universally justified on the grounds of productivity, collaboration, and culture. Almost universally, the evidence cited in support of…
In January 2021, as the full scope of the GameStop short squeeze became public, most commentary focused on the mechanics of the trade and the behavior of retail investors. Less…
The forced transition to remote work in 2020 exposed a management failure that had been hiding in plain sight for decades: the widespread substitution of physical presence for actual performance…
When organizations face existential pressure, they do not become different. They become more fully what they already were. The COVID-19 pandemic, arriving in March 2020 with the force of a…