Corporate Traps

Rafe pointed to this incredibly disturbing and depressing analysis of the television show The Office.

So why is promoting over-performing losers logical? The simple reason is that if you over-perform at the loser level, it is clear that you are an idiot. You’ve already made a bad bargain, and now you’re delivering more value than you need to, making your bargain even worse. Unless you very quickly demonstrate that you know your own value by successfully negotiating more money and/or power, you are marked out as an exploitable clueless loser.

I have only seen a minutes of the show itself, but could basically get the gist of what the guy is talking about even without knowing any of the characters. Coincidentally, I read this on the same day that I saw the Youtube that everyone is linking to with the 100 best quotes from The Wire — “the game’s out there and it’s either play or get played.” Self-awareness about one’s role in the game will keep you out of the ‘clueless’ masses described in the Office analysis article. But feeling like a chump ain’t all that much fun either.

It’s always a question for me how well such analyses apply to organizations like universities or certain kinds of not-for-profit organizations or government agencies–some pathologies become even more extreme, of course, but some things just don’t seem to apply at all. There are certain embedded assumptions regarding capitalism in analyses like this. And in my view many of our embedded assumptions about capitalism are just plain wrong. In any event, it’s possible to get played in any organization and it’s hard not to become cynical about what groups of people organized into firms, organizations, and institutions do if you pay attention even a little bit.

Le sigh.