Suppose you’re a manager in a corporation. There’s an urgent and difficult problem that needs attention, and you want to know if anyone would want to work unpaid overtime so they can make more progress. You don’t want to force unpaid overtime on anyone if it would be a significant inconvenience for them, but you also know that someone might say yes anyway in order to look like a better worker (and become more likely to get raises and promotions). So you can’t just ask everyone outright and expect an honest answer—you’re stuck implementing some version of guess culture with regards to asking people to work unpaid overtime, because a clear and unambiguous request isn’t going to be refused even if you think it ought to have been.
I have an example of how ask culture can fail.
Suppose you’re a manager in a corporation. There’s an urgent and difficult problem that needs attention, and you want to know if anyone would want to work unpaid overtime so they can make more progress. You don’t want to force unpaid overtime on anyone if it would be a significant inconvenience for them, but you also know that someone might say yes anyway in order to look like a better worker (and become more likely to get raises and promotions). So you can’t just ask everyone outright and expect an honest answer—you’re stuck implementing some version of guess culture with regards to asking people to work unpaid overtime, because a clear and unambiguous request isn’t going to be refused even if you think it ought to have been.