Get job, do job well, get rewarded for job well done.
Welcome to the basic trajectory of a typical professional arc—a trajectory instilled in us practically from the moment we’re first introduced to work. The problem with this arc, though, is that it assumes everyone on it is typical. A fallacy that has made the workplace an incredibly challenging environment for anyone who isn’t. And a hurdle that Tim Vogus—the Brownlee O. Currey Jr. Professor of Management and faculty director at Vanderbilt Business—is determined to eliminate.
Over the past year, Vogus, a leading voice on neurodiversity and workplace inclusion, has co-authored six papers examining the challenges created when professional environments are engineered around one type of person to the exclusion of everyone else: from veterans reentering the civilian workforce to autistic job seekers navigating interviews to business schools rethinking who their classrooms and hallways are built for. Each of these papers shows that, for those who don’t fit the mold, the costs are quiet, cumulative, and, in some cases, severe. Here is a breakdown of the research:
“All the Workplace Is a Stage: Extending the Double Empathy Problem Through Performative Relationality”
Nicole M. Reed & Timothy J. Vogus, Frontiers in Psychology
Born out of Nicole Reed’s lived work experience, this paper examines the “double empathy problem” hypothesized by D.E.M. Milton in 2012, which suggests that autistic/non-autistic miscommunication is mutual, and not a one-sided autistic deficit. Recent studies, however, have shown that shared-neurotype pairs don’t actually have an easier time when communicating with each other. Which, Reed and Vogus argue, isn’t so much a failure of double empathy as a theory as it is evidence of the overpowering reality of neurotypical expectations.
Using a vignette from Reed’s own life—she is autistic and will begin pursuing her PhD in organizational behavior this fall at Georgia Tech—the authors explore a concept they call “performative relationality,” where neurodivergent individuals engage in chronic, risk-responsive forms of social performance in order to reduce anxiety and adhere to neurotypical norms. Or, put more succinctly, even when neurodivergent individuals are conversing with each other, they will attempt to do so as neurotypically as possible out of a fear of being judged. Essentially, everyone is performing for an audience that also happens to be performing.
What this means for the workplace is that neuroinclusivity is going to require more than a company’s blanket invitation for employees to “be themselves.” The goal should be to stop favoring neurotypicality as the standard for acceptable workplace behavior, and instead welcome more diverse forms of interaction—ones that would hopefully foster an environment of mutual understanding.
“Healthcare Workplace Compassion Practices and Their Associations with Patient-Care Provider Therapeutic Connections”
Cheryl Rathert & Timothy J. Vogus, Journal of Healthcare Management
More often than not, quality healthcare comes from patient-centered care, and great patient-centered care happens when a provider is fully present, and when the patient feels truly heard. This is what authors Tim Vogus and Cheryl Rathert call “therapeutic connection” (TC). Better TCs are linked to better patient outcomes and satisfaction, but little is known about why. A question that Vogus and Rathert’s research seeks to clarify.
The authors surveyed 341 physicians, nurses, and physician assistants to test whether organizations that actively practice compassion—things like nursing recognition awards or regular staff sessions where providers can talk through the emotional weight of the job—actually produce stronger connections between patients and providers. The answer is yes, but the why turned out to be more nuanced than expected. Compassion practices didn’t directly improve patient connection. Instead, they worked through two intermediate steps: psychological safety (feeling like you can be your full self at work without being penalized for it) and perspective-taking (the cognitive effort of imagining what someone else is experiencing).
Basically, when workplaces normalize compassion, employees feel safer showing vulnerability. And that feeling of safety turns out to be the real driver of stronger patient connections. What this means for healthcare organizations is that compassion can’t just be a series of nice slogans on a flyer or a poster. It has to be built into actual practice. Things like recognition programs, and structured spaces for providers to process the emotional toll of the job, and leaders who model compassion themselves. This is where goodwill becomes more than just an idea, it becomes an actual practice that positively improves patient care.
“Bridging the Gap: An Integrative Review of Research on Veterans’ Transition to the Civilian Workplace”
John P. Jasionowicz, Maria Triana, Timothy J. Vogus & Jorge Delgado, Journal of Management
Given Vanderbilt Business’ large cohort of military veterans, this is an especially important and impactful paper from Vogus and his co-authors John P. Jasionowicz—a decorated veteran and an Owen MBA alum—Owen Professor Maria Triana, and Jorge Delgado. The question at the core of it is, why, given the unique skills that veterans bring to the workforce, do they frequently struggle to transition into civilian jobs?
Though research on this problem has existed for decades, it is scattered across disciplines with no unifying framework. For this study, the authors pulled together 145 studies and articles and deployed a combination of social identity and stigma theory to create a unifying framework that tries to make sense of it all. And what they found broke down into four basic themes.
First, while veterans are often perceived as disciplined, ethical, and strong leaders, they often struggle to describe those skills in civilian terms. Second, success often comes with dedicated programs and structured formats—the GI Bill, dedicated mentoring programs, structured interviews, and veteran-friendly HR policies. Third, failure often occurs in the face of persistent negative stereotyping—that veterans are undereducated, capable but “unfeeling,” or all have combat experience. Finally, employment for veterans isn’t just about the economic outcome; it’s also about mental health.
What the authors argue is that veterans are an untapped resource for understanding management theory, and that their extreme experience can sharpen existing ideas about stigma, social identity, and stress. In doing so, they hope that their work can bring together the scattered research in a way that helps aid the transition of veterans into meaningful civilian work.
“Supportive Employer Practices and Strategies for Autistic Job Seekers: Managing Interview Anxiety and Demonstrating Teamwork Skill”
Katie B. Brown, Susanne M. Bruyere, Hsiao-Ying Chang, Matthew C. Saleh & Timothy J. Vogus, Journal of Applied Rehabilitation Counseling
This paper continues Vogus’ ongoing efforts to make workplaces and businesses more neuroinclusive. The authors present a qualitative study interviewing 10 autistic job seekers and 13 employers about what makes job interviews so anxiety-inducing for autistic candidates. An unfortunate reality given that autistic adults face significantly higher unemployment rates than any other disability group, with roughly 42 percent of autistic people in their early 20s having never had paid work. And job interviews, it turns out, are a major factor.
On the candidate side, the biggest stressors are managing emotional and psychological pressure (fear of judgment, masking effort), decoding neurotypical social cues in real time, the disclosure dilemma (whether/when to reveal autism), and structural features like panel interviews, tight time limits, ambiguous questions (“tell me about yourself”), and no feedback after rejection.
For employers, the biggest hurdles are that hiring decisions often lean too heavily on perceived preparedness, professionalism, and “cooperative” teamwork behavior, which, more often than not, is assessed informally and subjectively.
Some concrete fixes that the researchers suggest include, on the candidate side, coming prepared with specific “go-to” teamwork stories, rehearsing with family or job coaches, and, when a workplace feels safe, disclosing autism proactively to set expectations. For employers, strategies that often help include one-on-one instead of panel interviews, sharing questions in advance, shortening or breaking up interviews, asking less ambiguous questions, and training interviewers on neurodiversity.
Vogus calls this paper a practical, ground-level companion to the more theoretical pieces he’s worked on, basically a “here’s what happens in the room” paper.
“A Design for All: De-Neurotypicalizing Business Schools and Achieving Substantive Performativity”
Jennifer R. Spoor, Tiffany Jameson, Jon Billsberry & Timothy J. Vogus, Academy of Management Learning & Education
While autistic and neurodivergent people often struggle to find employment, it turns out that business schools—one of the most reliable levers for creating professional opportunities—are just as prone to neurotypical bias as the workplace. Rather than a pathway to professional success, Tim Vogus and co-authors Jennifer R. Spoor, Tiffany Jameson, and Jon Billsberry argue that business schools routinely fail to accommodate neurodivergent students because they are quietly built around “neurotypical” assumptions about what a successful student, leader, or employee looks like. And worse, most efforts to encourage neurodiverse environments are symbolic gestures at best.
The solution, according to the authors, is to apply universal design to both learning (UDL, including multiple formats and flexible assessment) and work (UDW, including structured onboarding, transparent interviews, and “user manuals” like Vanderbilt’s own MBA neurodiversity elective or the neurodivergent-majority company Ultranauts’ “Biodex”).
The goal is to shift from “symbolic performativity” (saying the right things) to “substantive performativity” (changes to actual selection, curriculum, and workplace processes rather than rhetoric). Business schools have a unique obligation, since they’re training the next generation of managers and leaders who will decide whether other organizations become more neuroinclusive. Ultimately, this paper is a call-to-action rather than simply an empirical study, and it highlights Vanderbilt’s own MBA course as a successful working example.
“On the Folly of Rewarding Your Version of Performance: Signaling and the Double Empathy Problem in Pay-For-Performance Across Neurotypes”
Samantha A. Conroy & Timothy J. Vogus, Human Resource Management
*Named best paper for 2025 in Human Resource Management.
Plenty of companies have made strides toward hiring more neurodivergent employees, but unfortunately, few of them know how to accommodate those employees once they’re a part of the team. Which is an especially challenging scenario for autistic employees, who often struggle to stay employed or advance within the company where they work. For authors Tim Vogus and Samantha Conroy, the core of the problem comes down to a largely unexamined issue: pay-for-performance (PFP) systems.
As pay decisions have shifted from purely objective measures—like sales numbers—toward more subjective judgments like teamwork, the ground has become much more fertile for the previously mentioned double empathy problem in the workplace.
Essentially, when a manager sends a weak signal, like a subjective review on being a “team player,” a neurotypical employee can fill in the gaps through a sort of office osmosis—social cues, learning from peers, sensing what the manager implicitly wants—while an autistic employee will struggle to read those same cues to achieve a similar level of understanding. Which only gets worse over time, as employees with a weaker rapport with their managers get less feedback, and the feedback they do get becomes increasingly vague.
The fix, argue Vogus and Conroy, isn’t to create separate programs for neurodivergent employees, but to implement better design in the workplace. Things like explicit, behaviorally detailed pay criteria, pay transparency, and accommodations rather than assuming disclosure alone will solve the problem. It’s a way to create more objective, easy-to-read feedback for neurodivergent employees, and to eliminate the sort of workplace dynamics that autistic employees in particular are disproportionately affected by.