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My
last post on Jeff Pfeffer's next book, What
Were They Thinking? reminded me of Jeff's recent research on how people in
jobs where "time is money" fall into a trap: They start devoting more time
to their jobs, and less time to "unpaid" activities like family, friends, and
leisure.
There is a splendid summary of
this research on the Stanford Business School website, Time
is Money When You are Paid by the Hour, "In a series of recent studies,
Pfeffer and doctoral student Sanford E. DeVoe found that people who are used to
being paid by the hour start thinking of time as a commodity almost equal to
cash. And given the choice as to whether they'll take time or green bills,
they'll usually take the latter-meaning they're nearly always willing to put in
more hours to get the pay."
Writer Marguerite Rigoglioso quotes Pfeffer
further: "Being paid by the hour causes people to endorse the idea that they'd
rather make more money and spend more time at work," says Pfeffer, the Thomas
D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior. "This shows how a commodified
view of time spills over into how people view their personal and leisure time."
"Once you're paid
by the hour," he says, "you start placing a monetary value on that hour. The
opportunity costs of not working become clearer. People gravitate toward things
that are easier to evaluate, and it's easier to figure out the value of a paid
hour than it is, say, the value of an hour spent in a leisure activity. So they
chose work over play."
Pfeffer
and DeVoe also review related research, including one study that found "lawyers
watching their kids play soccer admitted to mentally ticking away lost income
for each minute they stood on the sidelines."
Ouch... I feel sorry for both the kids and the parents.
Unfortunately,
many professional service firms - especially those like law firms that bill by
the hour - systematically weed out people who don't think and act this way, as
they are less "profitable." This is the
kind of research that gives me chills and makes me wonder if a little less
"productivity" might be a good thing at times.
Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and
Engineering in the Stanford
Engineering School,
where he studies the links between managerial knowledge and organizational
action, innovation, and organizational performance. He has authored several books including most
recently (with Jeffrey Pfeffer) “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total
Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management” (Harvard Business School
Press, 2006). His next book, “The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized
Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t¸” will be published by Warner in early
2007. He can be reached at
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This article is posted under the creative commons license.
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