Book: Why We Work
Author: Barry Schwartz
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8486-1
U-$1.00-B-0.003856699-BE-260
Go to Why We Work Table of Contents
Go to 2017 Directory of Books & Authors
Chapter 3: How Good Work Goes Bad
Page 39
1. The Principles of Scientific Management by F.W. Taylor
Page 40
2. The Human Equation by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Page 41
3. Curriculum specialists, sitting in offices at boards of education, design curricula that are "idiot proof," spelling out in excruciating detail how the lessons should go.
Page 42
4. Practical Wisdom by Ken Sharpe and Barry Schwartz
Page 44
5. Standardized scripted curricula are tied directly to standardized tests, which are the most common measure of educational progress.
6. Standardized tests gave birth to standardized, scripted curricula.
Page 45
7. The scripted curricula and tests were aimed at improving the performance of weak teachers in failing schools-or forcing them out of teaching altogether.
Page 46
8. The reliance on material incentives as the principal motivator of employees. Carefully crafted incentive schemes, designed to ensure top performance, can often produce the opposite-competition among employees, and efforts to game the system and look good on whatever metric is being used to assign pay and bonuses without actually producing the underlying results that the metric is meant to asses.
Page 47
9. Patients' diseases and my service became commodities that were bought and sold at a price.
Page 48
10. The managed care organizations would get an annual fee per patient (called "capitation"). If a given patient cost more than that annual fee (because, for example, of repeated referrals to specialist), the managed care organization would suffer a loss.
Page 52
11. The billable hours system provides greater profits for the partners than they can make by themselves.
Page 54
12. Adding financial incentives to situations in which people are motivated to work hard and well without them seems to undermine rather than enhance the motives people already have. Economist Bruno Frey calls it "motivational crowding out."
13. Psychologist Edward Deci, Richard Ryan, and Mark Lepper talk about how "extrinsic" motivation, like the pursuit of money, undermines "intrinsic" motivation.
Page 55
14. But there is nothing to stop people from interpreting a fine as a price.
Page 56
15. The fines demoralized what had previously been a moral act.
16. And this is what incentives can do in general. They can change the question in people's minds from "Is this right or wrong?" to "Is this worth the price?"
Page 57
17. So reasons don't always add; sometimes, they compete.
18. Participants in the study can construe the task they face either as a social transaction (doing someone a favor) or a financial one (working for a fee).
19. Don't confuse social transactions with financial transactions.
Page 60
20. Economist Fred Hirsch said forty years ago, "the more that is written in contracts, the less can be expected without them; the more you write it down, the less is taken, or expected, on trust."
21. Work and Integrity by William Sullivan
22. There is really no substitute for the integrity that inspires people to do good work because they want to do good work.
23. And the more we rely on incentives as substitutes for integrity, the more we will need to rely on them as substitutes for integrity.
Author: Barry Schwartz
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8486-1
U-$1.00-B-0.003856699-BE-260
Go to Why We Work Table of Contents
Go to 2017 Directory of Books & Authors
Chapter 3: How Good Work Goes Bad
Page 39
1. The Principles of Scientific Management by F.W. Taylor
Page 40
2. The Human Equation by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Page 41
3. Curriculum specialists, sitting in offices at boards of education, design curricula that are "idiot proof," spelling out in excruciating detail how the lessons should go.
Page 42
4. Practical Wisdom by Ken Sharpe and Barry Schwartz
Page 44
5. Standardized scripted curricula are tied directly to standardized tests, which are the most common measure of educational progress.
6. Standardized tests gave birth to standardized, scripted curricula.
Page 45
7. The scripted curricula and tests were aimed at improving the performance of weak teachers in failing schools-or forcing them out of teaching altogether.
Page 46
8. The reliance on material incentives as the principal motivator of employees. Carefully crafted incentive schemes, designed to ensure top performance, can often produce the opposite-competition among employees, and efforts to game the system and look good on whatever metric is being used to assign pay and bonuses without actually producing the underlying results that the metric is meant to asses.
Page 47
9. Patients' diseases and my service became commodities that were bought and sold at a price.
Page 48
10. The managed care organizations would get an annual fee per patient (called "capitation"). If a given patient cost more than that annual fee (because, for example, of repeated referrals to specialist), the managed care organization would suffer a loss.
Page 52
11. The billable hours system provides greater profits for the partners than they can make by themselves.
Page 54
12. Adding financial incentives to situations in which people are motivated to work hard and well without them seems to undermine rather than enhance the motives people already have. Economist Bruno Frey calls it "motivational crowding out."
13. Psychologist Edward Deci, Richard Ryan, and Mark Lepper talk about how "extrinsic" motivation, like the pursuit of money, undermines "intrinsic" motivation.
Page 55
14. But there is nothing to stop people from interpreting a fine as a price.
Page 56
15. The fines demoralized what had previously been a moral act.
16. And this is what incentives can do in general. They can change the question in people's minds from "Is this right or wrong?" to "Is this worth the price?"
Page 57
17. So reasons don't always add; sometimes, they compete.
18. Participants in the study can construe the task they face either as a social transaction (doing someone a favor) or a financial one (working for a fee).
19. Don't confuse social transactions with financial transactions.
Page 60
20. Economist Fred Hirsch said forty years ago, "the more that is written in contracts, the less can be expected without them; the more you write it down, the less is taken, or expected, on trust."
21. Work and Integrity by William Sullivan
22. There is really no substitute for the integrity that inspires people to do good work because they want to do good work.
23. And the more we rely on incentives as substitutes for integrity, the more we will need to rely on them as substitutes for integrity.
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