Commentary
Amid AI angst and sweeping layoffs, the balance of power has swung back to managers, says Beth Kowitt for Bloomberg Opinion.
Bosses are trying to rationalise calling workers back to the office five days a week.
01 Jul 2026 05:59AM
NEW YORK: If you want the highest odds of maintaining a remote or hybrid work arrangement, make sure you’re not working for a narcissist.In the post-pandemic era, bosses have used all of corporate America’s favourite buzzwords - innovation, collaboration, culture, mentorship, productivity, performance - to rationalise calling workers back to the office five days a week. Cringey jargon aside, some of those justifications are reasonable and legitimate.But in a newly released research paper, Marissa Shandell, Courtney Elliott and Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School find that a boss’s objection to working from home is more likely to be driven by ego and a thirst for control and status than it is anything else.Their work tracks with a broader phenomenon I’ve been following for the last year and a half. Amid AI angst and sweeping layoffs, the balance of power has swung back to managers, and they are hungry to reassert and flaunt it in ways both big and small. As I’ve written, bosses - narcissistic or otherwise - are now in their command-and-control era, doing far less cajoling and convincing and much more demanding.
