American Institutes for Research – “Interesting Work but Serious Organizational Problems”

Pros

You get to work on interesting issues (applied research) with real policy implications. The majority of people at AIR are very professional and try to do the best work possible under tight time and budget constraints.

Cons

Information sharing is a problem resulting in people not having opportunities to work on projects (not knowing about projects or intentionally being excluded from them). Some of the information shared among people who actually have access to information is really misinformation. This misinformation has resulted in a kind of internal blackballing where people have been labeled "incompetent" by one person (often by an incompetent or unprofessional project director who yields a certain amount of political and economic clout) and then they find themselves unable to find any project work.

Another problem is the rampant favoritism in the promotion process. AIR tries hard to perpetuate the "illusion of transparency" with regard to the promotion process. However, beyond the obvious (and very tedious) performance review process that takes place between an employee and his/her immediate supervisor, the real decision making remains a mystery.

Although most people at AIR exhibit professional behavior, AIR does not adequately address employees (with clout) who have shown a pattern of unprofessional behavior (complaints by more than one employee at different points in time). AIR's Human Resource (HR) Department protects the organization and ends up penalizing the wrong party. Even when HR receives repeated complaints about an employee (e.g., unprofessional behavior, incompetence, sexual harassment), they protect those in power.

Advice to Senior Management

There needs to be better communication and information sharing between upper management and the employees. Secondly, there needs to be a better process in place for the assignment of work. It is rather ironic that a research organization filled with researchers fall prey to rumors regarding employees without "researching" what actually happened. Thirdly, the performance appraisal and promotion process needs to be changed to avoid the rampant favoritism currently in place. Lastly, the organization must deal effectively with employees who demonstrate unprofessional behavior regardless of their clout or level in the organization.