I was a guest on the podcast The Bunker, where I talked with host Andrew Harrison about how “grindset” culture and self-promoting CEOs are damaging businesses and society. We also talked about Fountains of Wayne. You can listen to the podcast here.
fact checking
Authorships for Sale
I’ve written several posts about predatory journals – journals that present themselves as academic journals, but which have no meaningful peer review and are published by questionable organizations. These journals exploit authors by charging excessive publication fees, and also give undeserved legitimacy to misleading or deeply flawed research. Now, thanks to the ongoing excellent work of Retraction Watch, I’ve become aware of another academic research scam: authorships for sale.
The opportunity to buy being listed as an author of an academic paper was something that was entirely new to me. Now, after looking into it, I believe it deserves a lot more attention. Like publishing research in predatory journals, selling authorship raises some very serious questions about the integrity of some academic publishers and researchers. And as has been pointed out elsewhere, financial grants intended to support research – especially government-funded grants – should actually be spent on research, not on dubious publishing “opportunities”.
I’m going to explain the basic model of selling authorships, and show some examples that were alarmingly easy to find.
When legitimate academic research is published, the authors of the research paper are assumed to have actually participated in the research that the paper describes. Traditionally, the authors’ names usually appear in a ranked order, with the first name being the author that contributed the most to the research or to writing the paper, the second name being the author that contributed the second most, and so forth. Thus, being “first author” or “lead author” carries more prestige, and sometimes more value in an evaluation, than being a second or third or fourth author.
The companies and individuals that sell authorships work this way. First, (more…)
A Closer Look at Malcolm Gladwell’s “Magic Third”
Twelve years ago, I wrote a post on this blog about the “10,000 hour rule” that Malcolm Gladwell promoted in his book Outliers. Gladwell claimed that 10,000 hours was the “magic number of greatness” – that 10,000 hours of practice was required to excel at an activity. The author of the study that Gladwell cited as supporting this claim said that Gladwell misinterpreted the study’s results. Others have pointed out that the “10,000 hour rule” is misleading in suggesting that the total time spent on an activity is the only predictor of success. It doesn’t take into account other variables that might affect skill development, such as deliberate practice, innate or acquired talent, the age at which someone begins the activity, and access to appropriate equipment, coaching, and training sites.
While there are debates about exactly how much effect some of these variables have, it’s clear that Gladwell took the 10,000-hour figure out of context, and also skimmed over some important details that are necessary to fully understand how skill development works.
The post I wrote on the “10,000-hour rule” is by far the most popular post ever on this blog. That shows how interested people are in what Gladwell says. It also shows the importance of looking closely at his claims – to see what evidence he cites to support them, and to see whether experts on the subject agree with his interpretations.
This is not to say that only experts can discuss these kinds of topics. Sometimes an outsider can see details or trends that experts don’t notice. And there’s always a place for a writer who’s not a scientist or researcher to explain research and its outcomes to a general audience. But the writer needs to get the details right, and not simplify things to the point where important pieces of information are omitted.
Gladwell has just released a new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. One of its
chapters is about a new “magic number”: the “Magic Third”. This, Gladwell claims, is the number of minority members in a group that’s necessary for the minority to be accepted as part of the group. I’m going to look at this claim in detail because this general subject (organization and group dynamics) falls into my own area of professional expertise, so I have some familiarity with the relevant research.
The chapter subtitle of “The Magic Third” is a quote from one of Gladwell’s interviewees: “I would say, absolutely, there is some tipping point in my experience”. Notice that the quote doesn’t mention the “magic third”, or any number for that matter; it only says that there is a demographic tipping point which causes group dynamics to change. This type of change is well-documented in research on the effects of group composition. The fact that group dynamics change if group membership changes also won’t be a surprise to anyone.
Gladwell starts out by discussing (more…)
The Power to Change
When I was researching the article on the “right to disconnect” that I recently wrote for The Conversation, one of the studies that I referenced was one exploring over-connectivity and gender equity in the legal profession. The Australian researchers interviewed 63 lawyers about the effects of newer digital technology tools (e.g. email, Zoom, Teams, texting, mobile phones) on their work. The legal profession is a good place to study these effects, because lawyers do complex work in time-sensitive situations that can unexpectedly change. They also simultaneously manage multiple clients, cases, and commitments.
The interviewees appreciated the work flexibility that digital technology gave them – particularly women with family or household commitments outside of work. But they reported that they were experiencing more challenges around setting boundaries between work and non-work times, due to their increased availability. Many also said that easier communication had intensified clients’ expectations for fast turnarounds and responses.
The interviewees discussed individual and firm-level strategies they used to deal with “digital overload”. These included clearly defined work hours, limiting the methods by which clients could contact them, and organizational policies with guidelines such as expected response times to messages from client. However, this part of the discussion really stood out to me. (more…)
Mapping Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada
UPDATE: Regrettably the creator of the map described in this post has discontinued the map website. Thank you for your hard work, anonymous map-maker. The federal government data that were used to make the map, and that are regularly updated, are posted here.
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In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of discussion around the Canadian federal government’s Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program. This program allows eligible employers to hire temporary workers from outside Canada. To be eligible to hire a TFW, an employer usually has to obtain a “positive” Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), which is a confirmation that the employer cannot find qualified Canadian workers to fill its vacant job. A worker entering Canada on a TFW permit can only work for the employer that received the LMIA for the job.
Part of the reason for the increased attention to the TFW program is the release of a new report commissioned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. The report calls the TFW program “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery”. It alleges that employers having control over TFWs’ immigration status in Canada leads to worker exploitation and abuse, with workers afraid to report mistreatment for fear of being fired and deported. It’s also been suggested that Canadian employers turn to using TFWs when they aren’t willing to pay the higher wage rates that Canadian workers expect.
Other critics of the program have alleged that the LMIA process is being corrupted by unethical employers and immigration agents. These employers create non-existent jobs, get positive LMIAs for those jobs, and then, with the help of the agents, “sell” the LMIAs to individual immigrants. The immigrant pays the employer a fee – allegedly often in the tens of thousands of dollars – and the employer hires the immigrant to fill the vacant “job”. The immigrant can then (more…)
Being Woke about “Woke”
Research is intended to move knowledge forward. One of the ways that happens is by putting ideas forward and collectively discussing them.
A new article in the academic journal Academy of Management Perspectives asks the provocative question: Why Do Companies Go Woke? It’s extremely troubling that research mostly based on broad generalizations and selective interpretations has been published in such a high-profile journal – particularly one with the stated mission of “inform[ing] current and future ‘thought leaders’”.
Before anyone starts screaming “censorship” – the authors of the article, like any researchers, have a right to research whatever they think is worth researching, and to write about the results of that research. However, no researcher has the right to have their research published, and journals are not required to publish every submission they receive. The editors of Academy of Management Perspectives have affected the journal’s credibility by choosing to publish this article, thus legitimizing its inaccurate and divisive positions.
Analyzing how companies choose to react to events in society is an extremely valuable research topic. Understanding these reactions can generate further insights, and possibly assist other companies in reacting appropriately or productively. However, one of the many problems with the article’s approach to this topic is the article’s fundamental concepts: the definition of “woke”, and (more…)
Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud
This week, Barry Biffle, the CEO of Frontier Airlines in the US, gave a speech at a private event in which he said “we got lazy in COVID” and called post-COVID working from home “silliness”. Biffle is certainly not the only CEO to speak out against employees working from home, but his characterizing workers as “lazy” drew a considerable amount of criticism.
It’s an interesting time in a lot of workplaces. Full-time working from home was an emergency response to an emergency situation (although we should remember that between 60% and 70% of jobs cannot be done remotely), and as such, the pandemic experience of fully remote work shouldn’t be considered an example of how remote work can be optimally structured and operated. However, even in that emergency situation, some at-home workers discovered that they liked features of remote work such as (more…)
Ratification
One of the biggest recent news stories in my region was the strike by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) locals that represent port workers on Canada’s west coast. Not only did this strike severely affect the flow of goods entering Canada from overseas – after all, part of the point of a strike is to cause economic disruption – but it also had an unusual and prolonged ending. The initial tentative collective agreement was rejected by a council representing the union’s locals. And then, when a another tentative agreement was reached, it was approved by the council but rejected by the membership. The dispute finally ended at the end of August when the members accepted another version of the agreement.
This was an extremely complex collective bargaining situation, with several different union locals in several locations, many different occupations represented by those locals, and an association representing 49 different employers bargaining on the management side. I’m not going to get into all of the specific details of the dispute – this is a very good summary and overview of it – but I’m going to discuss the issue of ratification votes on tentative collective agreements, because some of the media coverage of the dispute didn’t explain this accurately.
First, it’s helpful to understand (more…)
On Strike Votes and Turnouts
Last week, more than 120,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada/Alliance de la fonction publique du Canada (PSAC/AFPC) – the union that represents many of Canada’s federal employees – went on strike. The unresolved bargaining issues include wage rates and the amount of remote work (“work at home”) done by PSAC members.
A PSAC member filed a complaint with the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board asking for the strike vote to be declared invalid, because PSAC shortened the voting period after the announcement of the vote. In their decision, the three Board members hearing the complaint noted that while “the respondent made no discernible effort to announce its reduction of the voting period”, and expressed misgivings about other aspects of the changes to the voting process, such as limited attempts to reach members without email addresses, and limited capacity at the mandatory information meetings held online prior to the vote itself.
Nevertheless, the Board members concluded, the vote was more than 80% in favour of striking and “the Board is satisfied that in the current circumstances, the vote result would have been the same even without the irregularities.”
A considerable amount of the news coverage of this case has focused on the low turnout in the vote – only 35% of eligible PSAC members participated. The underlying tone to much of this coverage is that because of the low turnout, the vote is somehow not representative of the opinion of the entire PSAC membership. It seems that some journalists and commentators could benefit from a review of some basic information about strike votes and democratic processes. Here it is. (more…)
Vocational Awe
Earlier this week, US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona Tweeted a photo of himself visiting an elementary school classroom, with the caption “Teaching isn’t a job you hold. It’s an extension of your life’s purpose”. Numerous responses to the Tweet pointed out that teaching is indeed a job, and that characterizing it as “your life’s purpose” is questionable.
One of the more liked responses to the Tweet said: “No. It’s a job. When we view it as some sort of holier than thou calling, it makes it easier for those in power to justify paying us crap salaries because “we signed up for it” or expecting martyrdom because “That’s the life of a teacher” or “it’s for the kids””.
Some of the other responders to Cardona’s Tweet mentioned a concept called “vocational awe”. This is a term that was new to me. I looked it up, and I was extremely impressed. “Vocational awe” is relevant to many occupations, and I honestly can’t believe that I never encountered it in several decades of teaching and research about work and workplaces. That says a lot about the limited and biased ways in which work and organizations are understood.
The term “vocational awe” originated in an essay by librarian Fobazi Ettarh. She defines it as:
the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in beliefs that libraries as institutions are inherently good and sacred, and therefore beyond critique….I would like to dismantle the idea that librarianship is a sacred calling; thus requiring absolute obedience to a prescribed set of rules and behaviors, regardless of any negative effect on librarians’ own lives.
Ettarh characterizes the negative effects of vocational awe on the worker this way: (more…)
All About Work 