But it’s in the interests of employers who want to use this sort of approach, to trick prospective (and current) employees not to act in their own economic best interests… which is, of course, precisely what we see.
So actually not. As I mentioned in another comment, adding people to your DDO who aren’t on board with being in a DDO is a recipe for disaster: they will be unhappy at what a DDO asks of them, and the organization will be less DDO-like (to the point it may cease to really be a DDO). Maybe that’s what’s happened at Bridgewater; I don’t know there so I can’t say.
All businesses ask employees to make particular choices about a bundle of goods that they purchase with their labor. DDOs offer a currently uncommon bundle of goods that some people like a lot. Some people don’t like it, so they work at other businesses that offer a different bundle of goods in exchange for labor. Yes, some of the bundle of goods can be negotiated on an individual basis, such that, for example, someone who isn’t excited about working at a DDO but that the DDO really wants to hire might pay them extra to compensate them for doing labor they view as more costly, but the case is exactly the same when we consider an organization with a culture of Taylorism or something else: if it wants to hire someone who isn’t excited about the culture, they will have to compensate them to offset the costs associated with the culture. As it turns out, though, mind space is big, not everyone wants the same thing, and so there are plenty of people to go around who want to work in these different types of cultures and are happy to do so for not much additional compensation on the margin.
So actually not. As I mentioned in another comment, adding people to your DDO who aren’t on board with being in a DDO is a recipe for disaster: they will be unhappy at what a DDO asks of them, and the organization will be less DDO-like (to the point it may cease to really be a DDO). Maybe that’s what’s happened at Bridgewater; I don’t know there so I can’t say.
All businesses ask employees to make particular choices about a bundle of goods that they purchase with their labor. DDOs offer a currently uncommon bundle of goods that some people like a lot. Some people don’t like it, so they work at other businesses that offer a different bundle of goods in exchange for labor. Yes, some of the bundle of goods can be negotiated on an individual basis, such that, for example, someone who isn’t excited about working at a DDO but that the DDO really wants to hire might pay them extra to compensate them for doing labor they view as more costly, but the case is exactly the same when we consider an organization with a culture of Taylorism or something else: if it wants to hire someone who isn’t excited about the culture, they will have to compensate them to offset the costs associated with the culture. As it turns out, though, mind space is big, not everyone wants the same thing, and so there are plenty of people to go around who want to work in these different types of cultures and are happy to do so for not much additional compensation on the margin.