适应性陷阱：生存依赖、沟通与隐形工作的分配
The Accommodation Trap: Survival Dependence, Communication, and the Allocation of Invisible Work
- Southern Illinois University Carbondale（南伊利诺伊大学卡本代尔分校）
机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。
AI总结：
本文提出适应性陷阱理论：依赖型工人因生存压力采取适应性沟通，被主管理性分配隐形低晋升工作，导致自我强化不平等，且纠正信念无法消除，需制度干预打破链接。
AI中文摘要：
本文提出了工作场所层级中适应性陷阱的理论。拥有较弱外部选择的工人面临更高的关系成本，表现为显得不可用、抗拒或难以相处，因此他们采取适应性沟通（额外的尊重、软化的界限、可见的灵活性）以维持雇佣关系。这种短期策略也是一个信息性信号：一个追求摩擦最小化的主管理性地推断，适应性强的工人不太可能抗拒，并将隐形、晋升前景低的工作分配给他们。该信号伤害了发出信号的工人。与棘轮效应模型中的代理人（他们隐藏会招致更重需求的信息）不同，依赖型工人暴露其低拒绝成本，因为适应性的关系价值随依赖程度上升。由此产生的不平等不需要生产率差异或歧视偏好，且主管的信念是正确的，因此纠正信念无法消除它。当可见工作建立外部选择而隐形工作侵蚀它们时，这种分配变得自我强化，即使初始相同的工人也以概率一被锁定在不平等的角色中。该均衡对每一方都是私人理性的，但当外部选择的边际收益递减超过主管的摩擦成本时，它在社会上是低效的。将认可附加于隐形工作、通过规则轮换它或限制管理自由裁量权，均会削弱或打破维持陷阱的从沟通到分配的链接。
英文摘要：
This paper develops a theory of accommodation traps in workplace hierarchies. Workers with weak outside options face a higher relational cost of appearing unavailable, resistant, or difficult, and so adopt accommodative communication (extra deference, softened boundaries, visible flexibility) to preserve the employment relationship. This short-run strategy is also an informative signal: a friction-minimizing supervisor rationally infers that an accommodating worker is less likely to resist, and assigns that worker the invisible, low-promotability work. The signal harms the worker who sends it. Unlike agents in ratchet-effect models, who conceal information that would invite heavier demands, dependent workers reveal their low refusal cost, because the relational value of accommodating rises with dependence. The resulting inequality requires no productivity difference and no taste for discrimination, and the supervisor's beliefs are correct, so correcting beliefs cannot remove it. When visible work builds outside options and invisible work erodes them, the allocation becomes self-reinforcing, and even workers who start out identical are locked into unequal roles with probability one. The equilibrium is privately rational for every party yet socially inefficient whenever diminishing returns to outside options outweigh the supervisor's friction cost. Attaching recognition to invisible work, rotating it by rule, or limiting managerial discretion each weakens or breaks the link from communication to assignment that sustains the trap.
