I came here to talk about gatekeeping and I think you described the situation pretty well.
But frankly speaking, the way corporations are being run where people are constantly being let go for profit, I would be very surprised if people are not actively gatekeeping to keep jobs. If the reward for collaboration is to assign all your work to someone else and let you go, what incentives exist for you to not gatekeep everything and collude with other gatekeepers to stay in the in group?
Ultimately it boils down to incentives. The most collaborative orgs tend to have a culture of sharing rewards and splitting the punishments. When you take that away, you’re just in the hunger games and all culture talk is just background noise.
Once the relationship becomes an adversarial one, it seems like the company is stuck in a spiral that is very hard to escape from. Employees can no longer assume good faith on behalf of the company, and will start complying with the letter instead of the spirit of incentives or policies. In turn the company is forced to tweak incentives or make policies stricter in an attempt to plug the gap. All the while increasing the amount of bureaucracy.
But frankly speaking, the way corporations are being run where people are constantly being let go for profit, I would be very surprised if people are not actively gatekeeping to keep jobs. If the reward for collaboration is to assign all your work to someone else and let you go, what incentives exist for you to not gatekeep everything and collude with other gatekeepers to stay in the in group?
Ultimately it boils down to incentives. The most collaborative orgs tend to have a culture of sharing rewards and splitting the punishments. When you take that away, you’re just in the hunger games and all culture talk is just background noise.