Use of Role Occupancy to Assess the Risk of Employee Teratogenesis
By Don Philip Faithful
I first encountered the term “teratogenesis” during a toxicology course. It means the “making of monsters,” which is perhaps an overstatement of the situation. At the same time, when somebody decides to compromise security, they willingly place at risk not just the company but the lives its clients. Of course, the biological premise of the term is that the specimen didn’t start off a monster. It became one perhaps through exposure to hazardous chemicals perhaps combined with inherent susceptibilities or vulnerabilities. When dealing with human, the term “diathesis” is used to explain why people don’t all respond the same way to the same challenges. It is of great interest to many stress researchers the spectrum of responses to stressors in the environment. This gives us the uncomfortable or at least unsettling idea that some people will “turn” while others will not. This creates hurdles when applying a scientific approach since validation becomes questionable.
On the other hand, Role Occupancy is a lens through which to examine organizational information. I am reminded of the famous Stanford experiment that had participants occupy specific roles – in this case, prison guards and prisoners. Role Occupancy seems to carry a significant force not just to impose conformity but for people to live out conformity. I also find myself reflecting on Dr. Steven Brown’s research at McMaster University in Hamilton in which MRIs were taken of actors while in persona. The basic conclusion that comes to mind is that certain portions of the human brain toggle off when people are “acting.” I myself while doing a paper on the radical personas of youth gang member found an interesting book that I will just mention was all about youth gang members in jail sharing their lives and experiences. One immediately notices that their radical personas seem notably absent during the interviews – and in fact the participants possessed the ability to toggle the radical persona on and off in response to circumstances. This is not much different from the phenomenon of “posing” – to fit or blend into an adverse environment. Suffice it to say, there is some body of research supporting this idea that Role Occupancy is an important aspect of apparent identity or the instrumental use of one’s identity. The Stanford experiment certainly suggest that this use can at times lead to psychopathological outcomes.
From a business standpoint, I consider it important from a professional and human rights standpoint not to jump to conclusions about an employee through observations of their behaviour or even their metrics, which I suppose is quite the opposite of a scientific approach. However, I will give a reason to discard or at least temporarily set aside science in the case of Role Occupancy. This is because Role Occupancy can be deliberate. “Willy Smith appears to be this, that, and something else.” Willy might be a good actor. Indeed, perhaps a fair number of people who “fit in” are simply endowed with exceptional acting skills. What we do get from Willy Smith and other employees is the appearance of Role Occupancy. This is to say, whether or not the persona was deliberately chosen may not necessarily matter in a risk assessment.
Consider a departmental manager who is highly metrics oriented. People can express all sorts of opinions about the manager. But focusing on the employee, it would seem that they can fit into the metrics regime, suddenly they have a secure place in the organization – even if their ultimate goal is to gather intelligence for hackers, obtain credentials, and plant payloads. Teratogenesis is therefore made possible through Role Occupancy. The compromised worker isn’t in a smash-and-grab scenario at all – but rather his function is skillful infiltration. Infiltration is more likely if there are places to hide – such as their personas. As the scenery, work, and surrounding individuals, the successful infiltrator must adapt their persona or even spin a different one in response. One might take an Inventory of Role Occupancy not so much to determine criminal intent but to ascertain the often silent risk of Teratogenesis. Some of these risk can be delineated though a social disablement lens. This is to say, when one can confirm a socially disabling environment, they can reasonably assume the presence of both victims and skilled actors.