I’m not sure that it’s the corporate structure that makes negative selection more useful in the data entry case. It’s not the fact that the data-entry clerk is part of a large organisation that means that a slightly incompetent data-entry clerk is more disruptive than a genius-level one is helpful. Rather it’s the fact that data-entry is a relatively low skill job and with relatively little room for excelling above mere competence. Leaving the corporation wholly out of it, and imagining a person doing data entry in complete isolation, the most helpful data-entry clerk would still be selected by making sure they weren’t terrible, but weren’t necessarily brilliant, at typing and remaining attentive etc. I think this idea is supported by the fact that for higher level/skill positions, one probably would want to employ more positive selection.
If your point was specifically that insubordination (and not just slight incompetence in general) is more harmful than genius-level work is helpful, then I guess that, in an obvious sense, the harm of insubordination is due to the corporate nature of work (since you can’t be insubordinate outside of a group hierarchy). But then I’m not sure that insubordination-worries requires negative selection, or at least not a wide range of negative selection tests. Sure, you might want to include a negative selection test along the lines of ‘are they likely to do the opposite of what they’re told on a whim occasionally?’, but it’s an open question whether the rest of your criteria would be negative or positive.
The point I should have made clear was that data-entry clerks don’t exist outside of corporations, because in isolation they’re useless. More generally, mass production has been made possible by the production-line paradigm: break down the undertaking into tiny discrete jobs and assign a bunch of people to doing each one over and over again.
Once you get that kind of framework, exceptionally good workers aren’t very helpful, because the people to either side of them in the production line aren’t necessarily going to keep up. You just need to shut up and do your job, the same as everyone else.
At the high levels—the people wielding their collective underlings as a tool, rather than the people who are part of that tool—this obviously no longer works.
Important note: all of the above, including my original comment, is 100% psuedo-intellectual wank, since I’ve never been part of a corporation, never taken a business management course or seminar, and never conducted or read a study on the efficacy of various business practices.
I’m not sure that it’s the corporate structure that makes negative selection more useful in the data entry case. It’s not the fact that the data-entry clerk is part of a large organisation that means that a slightly incompetent data-entry clerk is more disruptive than a genius-level one is helpful. Rather it’s the fact that data-entry is a relatively low skill job and with relatively little room for excelling above mere competence. Leaving the corporation wholly out of it, and imagining a person doing data entry in complete isolation, the most helpful data-entry clerk would still be selected by making sure they weren’t terrible, but weren’t necessarily brilliant, at typing and remaining attentive etc. I think this idea is supported by the fact that for higher level/skill positions, one probably would want to employ more positive selection.
If your point was specifically that insubordination (and not just slight incompetence in general) is more harmful than genius-level work is helpful, then I guess that, in an obvious sense, the harm of insubordination is due to the corporate nature of work (since you can’t be insubordinate outside of a group hierarchy). But then I’m not sure that insubordination-worries requires negative selection, or at least not a wide range of negative selection tests. Sure, you might want to include a negative selection test along the lines of ‘are they likely to do the opposite of what they’re told on a whim occasionally?’, but it’s an open question whether the rest of your criteria would be negative or positive.
The point I should have made clear was that data-entry clerks don’t exist outside of corporations, because in isolation they’re useless. More generally, mass production has been made possible by the production-line paradigm: break down the undertaking into tiny discrete jobs and assign a bunch of people to doing each one over and over again.
Once you get that kind of framework, exceptionally good workers aren’t very helpful, because the people to either side of them in the production line aren’t necessarily going to keep up. You just need to shut up and do your job, the same as everyone else.
At the high levels—the people wielding their collective underlings as a tool, rather than the people who are part of that tool—this obviously no longer works.
Important note: all of the above, including my original comment, is 100% psuedo-intellectual wank, since I’ve never been part of a corporation, never taken a business management course or seminar, and never conducted or read a study on the efficacy of various business practices.