Andras’s work has been pathbreaking in part because it demonstrates the depth of structural features that support gender discrimination and, more broadly, discrimination against people who are vulnerable for a range of reasons, including disability.   Is this the right way to think about what you work on?

Andras describes his work as about the dark sides of organizations:  disasters, discrimination, and crises.   The stream of his work on discrimination involves looking at labor markets, where he finds an ongoing and persistent challenge of discrimination on gender, sexual orientation, class, disability, and race.   He explained that it’s difficult to know whether these problems are reduced.  The evidence so far seems to suggest that the problems are much deeper and more multifaceted than, say, only in attracting applicants to job openings.  The problems become “pushed back” into the organization.   In hiring for example, there is the problem of trying to attract applicants with diverse backgrounds for job openings.  But even once that problem is addressed, it might be that the hiring committee cannot appreciate the qualifications of diverse applicants, and so equity in hiring doesn’t improve.   Andras explained that often organizations don’t take the time to understand exactly what problem exists in their organizations, and so it is difficult for them to address it effectively.  Andras noted that the demonstrated intention by senior management to find multiple challenges – to understand and solve the problems that lead to inequity – can send a strong signal that changes organizational behavior.

Anita asked Andras about the connections between these findings and those that he reports on in Meltdown, his book on disasters and recovery.

Andras described how failures can cause some companies to clamp up, but others sometimes take important steps toward learning.  Etsy, for example, runs “blameless post mortems” on failed projects.   It’s very difficult to do this well.  But the processes of unpacking problems can often lead to structural change.  The key message that management needs to send is that this is a normal part of work.  The goal is to do a blameless post mortem before a true tragedy arises.    Often, there are a lot of small failures, near misses, and red flags.  Those need to be attended, not ignored.

What do great organizations do to understand how to avoid disasters, and how to avert discrimination?

Andras talked about the importance of cultivating dissent.   Many organizations do not listen to whistleblowers.   NASA, for example, has learned that engineers are better at listening to accountants and lawyers who are “inside outsiders” now than they once were.   He talked about how the Department of Corrections in Washington learned from a truck driver for Boeing about mistakes it was making in release schedules.

Increasingly, Andras sees pockets of companies becoming more open to dissenting voices that can alert management to unwanted problems before they escalate.  The goal is to force a reckoning.