It’s essentially a law of human behavior: We feel most comfortable with people who are similar to us. But that similarity can lead to all kinds of dilemmas in the workplace, especially when it comes to hiring.

Award-winning sociologist Lauren Rivera is the Peter G. Peterson Chair in Corporate Ethics and a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Her research explores how people define and evaluate status and merit, and how those definitions shape social inequalities. Her best-selling book Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs investigates on-campus recruitment and hiring for elite professional service firms.

On the season 6 premiere, organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava sit down with Lauren to discuss how the paths to elite opportunities start at an early age and can be heavily dependent on one’s socioeconomic status. They also unpack why the term “culture fit” can actually mean social similarity in a way that often advantages white, high-class men and can reinforce gender, race, class, and disability inequalities.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

1. Don’t confuse chemistry for qualifications.  Just because you feel good talking to someone does not mean they're actually going to perform well on the job.
2. Expand what you consider to be meaningful signs of ambition or drive.  Just because someone isn't running a marathon does not necessarily mean that they're not a motivated potential employee.
3.  Structure your interviews. Ensure that  interviews are not open-ended and filled with questions like, what do you like to do in your spare time? But instead, the questions tie directly to the qualities you’re seeking for that role.

Full transcript available at: https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/posts/when-culture-fit-becomes-a-recipe-for-bias/

• Lauren Rivera | Website
• Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs by Lauren Rivera (Princeton Press)
• Essentializing merit: Disability and exclusion in elite private school admissions
• Physical Fit: The Role of Sports in Elite Hiring in Norway
• Not in my schoolyard: Disability discrimination in educational access
• Beyond the company line: studying workplace inequalities ethnographically
• Raj Chetty - Power of Zip Code
• Patterns of Implicit and Explicit Stereotypes III: Long-Term Change in Gender Stereotypes - Mahzarin Banaji and Tessa Charlesworth

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

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Healthcare organizations don't just have an efficiency problem—they have a culture problem. Siloed specialists, misaligned incentives, and fragmented decision-making leave patients frustrated and clinicians burned out.

Jonathan Kolstad is a professor of economic analysis and policy at UC Berkeley Haas and is one of the country's leading health economists. He’s the founder and faculty director of the Center for Healthcare Marketplace Innovation (CHMI), a joint center between Haas and UC Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science, and Society. CHMI’s executive director is Ted Robertson, who specializes in designing and building healthcare products with the best mix of human and AI insights in decision making.

On this episode of The Culture Kit, Jon and Ted join organizational culture expert and co-host Jenny Chatman, Dean of the Haas School, to explain why healthcare’s broken structure is ultimately a culture problem, and how AI—deployed in the right way—might help fix it.

(Note: Co-host Sameer Srivastava was out of town for this episode.)

1. Healthcare's fragmentation is baked into the incentive structure, creating professional subcultures that work against patients and each other.
2. AI has the potential to reduce burnout in healthcare providers and give patients a higher quality standard of care.
3. General-purpose AI isn't enough: healthcare needs models trained on real clinical decision-making, not medical textbooks.

Read the full transcript of this episode on our website: https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/posts/healthcare-has-a-culture-problem-can-ai-help-fix-it

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

• Center for Healthcare Marketplace Innovation
• Jonathan Kolstad - Berkeley Haas
• Jonathan Kolstad - personal website
• Ted Robertson- Berkeley Executive Education
• Ted Robertson - New leaders aim to bring AI solutions for health and climate to society”
• College of Computing, Data Science & Society - UC Berkeley
• How Berkeley Haas research fueled a company that could save Medicare patients from costly mistakes

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The office has never been just a place to work, it both reflects and shapes an organization’s culture. The furniture, the light, the layout, the ratio of private to shared space—all of it sends signals, whether leaders intend them to or not.

Paul Cooper and Christopher Good have spent their careers translating between what organizations say they value and what their spaces actually communicate. Paul is a principal at the architecture firm, TEF Design, and has spent 30 years designing places where people come together. Christopher is Chief Creative Officer at One Workplace, a workplace design and furnishings company, with the philosophy that no one should have to come into an office by default anymore, the office needs to earn it.

On this episode, Paul and Christopher join organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss what offices should look like now in the age of remote and hybrid models, why rents in one AI-centric San Francisco neighborhood have doubled why downtown office space sits empty, and the unknowns of designing for the future as AI takes off.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

1. One solution does not fit all spaces. Come up with some guiding principles, as a team, that align with the overall mission and vision for that space’s design.
2. Ask why your workplace exists. If it’s about people, own that, invest in it, and design for what their needs are.
3. Design for the in-between experiences. When workers aren’t at their desks or in a conference room, how does the design of the space create moments for connection?

Read the full transcript of "The Office Has to Earn It: How Physical Space Shapes Organizational Culture."

• Paul Cooper, TEF Design
• Christopher Good | LinkedIn
• Finding shared meaning through propinquity | Christopher Good | TEDxPleasanton
• Embracing the Hybrid Future: Innovative Strategies for Cultivating Workplace Culture (One Workplace)
• How to bridge the gap between workplace design and culture (Culture Amp)

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.