How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work

Teresa  Amabile; Steven J. Kramer

Article | McKinsey Quarterly | January 2012

How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work

by Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer

Abstract

Senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment by damaging the inner work lives of their employees in four avoidable ways. This article is based on analysis of hundreds of work diaries from professionals describing everyday events that involved high-level managers in their companies. The analysis uncovered four major type of actions that reduce meaningfulness in the work and, as a result, lead to more negative emotions, lower intrinsic motivation, and less favorable perceptions of the organization--with negative consequences for performance. These actions include signaling low expectations for innovation, switching strategic direction too frequently, miscoordination of organizational systems, and vague, unrealistically grandiose goals. The research also revealed ways in which top managers can avoid these traps.

Keywords: Leadership; Creativity; Performance Productivity; Motivation and Incentives; Innovation Strategy; Performance; Strategic Planning; Leading Change; Balanced Scorecard; Mission and Purpose;

Format: Print

8 pages

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Citation:

Amabile, Teresa, and Steven J. Kramer. "How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work." McKinsey Quarterly, no. 1 (January 2012): 124–131.

Chapter | Handbook of Behavioral Economics | 2019

Behavioral Economics and Health-Care Markets

Amitabh Chandra, Benjamin Handel and Joshua Schwartzstein

This chapter summarizes research in behavioral health economics, focusing on insurance markets and product markets in health care. We argue that the prevalence of choice difficulties and biases leading to mistakes in these markets establish a special place for them in economic analysis. In addition, we argue that while the behavioral health-economics literature has done a better job documenting consumer-choice mistakes in insurance and treatment choices than explaining why those mistakes occur, it is clear that we should not ignore these mistakes in our analyses. We document evidence showing that consumers leave lots of money on the table in their insurance-plan choices, sometimes thousands of dollars. This is true both when consumers make active choices (e.g., they do not have a default plan) and when they make passive choices (e.g., they have a default plan). We discuss the implications of this body of work for the design and regulation of insurance markets, including the interaction between consumer choice difficulties or biases and adverse selection. We then document evidence on consumer mistakes in health-care utilization and treatment choices, especially in response to changes in prices such as copayments and deductibles. We show how choice difficulties or biases may lead patients to respond to such increases in patient cost-sharing by reducing demand for high-value care, muddying the traditional argument that the price elasticity of demand for medical care meaningfully captures the degree of moral hazard. We conclude with directions for future research.

Keywords: Behavioral economics; Consumer Behavior; Economics; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Markets;

Citation:

Chandra, Amitabh, Benjamin Handel, and Joshua Schwartzstein. "Behavioral Economics and Health-Care Markets." In Handbook of Behavioral Economics: Foundations and Applications 2, edited by B. Douglas Bernheim, Stefano DellaVigna, and David Laibson. Amsterdam: Elsevier/North-Holland, 2019. View Details

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