Entries by Brian Scott Gallagher

The C.R.A.P. Framework for Addressing Workplace Bullshit

Call me naive but I was shocked as an undergraduate to see, in a serious book about George Orwell, an unserious profanity preceding the table of contents. Within the first few pages I read that the author, Christopher Hitchens, dedicated his book “To Robert Conquest — premature anti-fascist, premature anti-Stalinist, poet and mentor, and founder […]

March 30, 2020 by

The Philosopher-for-Hire Who Says Meaningful Work Is an Illusion

Over the last decade, Andrew Taggart has made a name for himself. Outlets like Quartz and Big Think have described him as a gadfly-for-hire, a practical philosopher who offers his conversational and philosophical acumen to the likes of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, among others. He told The Guardian that he has executives question whether the existence […]

March 26, 2020 by

The Case for Diversifying the Prototypical Leader

Earlier this month, the commercial real-estate company WeWork, tarnished by financial implosion, hired as its new CEO an industry veteran, Sandeep Mathrani, who’s handled some remarkable turnarounds. He’s revived some suburban malls, for instance, the sort of place online shopping has largely put to rest. WeWork must be hoping Mathrani can work his mall magic for […]

February 20, 2020 by

Is There a Problem with Meaningful Work?

The eminent philosopher Bertrand Russell, who died exactly 50 years ago at the impressive age of 97, once penned a polemic lauding laziness. Beginning on a humorous note—he wrote of having hopes that, after reading his essay, the leaders of the YMCA would “start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing”—Russell went […]

January 30, 2020 by

Meet Alison Taylor, Ethical Systems’ New Executive Director

Over the years I’ve found it common, interviewing people, to hear that their line of work wasn’t what they envisioned for themselves. A game theorist I spoke to not too long ago, for example, had originally planned to study spacetime but now he models cooperation. Recently, I was curious about the sort of response I’d […]

January 25, 2020 by

The Psychology of Ford’s Fiesta and Focus Cover-Up

It started with a trail of car owners bringing their Fords to repair shops. Eventually, it escalated to an out-of-control hemorrhaging of warranty costs and legal bills. Now Ford faces a federal criminal fraud probe into its conduct. Did the company know that the DPS6 dual-clutch “PowerShift” transmission it installed in its Focus and Fiesta cars […]

January 6, 2020 by

The Problem with Hiring Algorithms

In 2004, when a “webcam” was relatively unheard-of tech, Mark Newman knew that it would be the future of hiring. One of the first things the 20-year old did, after getting his degree in international business, was to co-found HireVue, a company offering a digital interviewing platform. Business trickled in. While Newman lived at his […]

December 2, 2019 by

Do Traditional Compliance Efforts Weaken Workers’ Moral Motivation?

How can organizations actualize their employees’ ethical potential? It’s a question Carsten Tams has been tossing around recently. In his time helping companies with organizational design and cultural change, among other things, he’s come to believe that, in the right environment, people are quite capable, even eager, to conform with and uphold ethical norms. Behavioral […]

November 27, 2019 by