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Article | Academy of Management Journal | August 2018

Deep Help in Complex Project Work: Guiding and Path-Clearing Across Difficult Terrain

by Colin M. Fisher, Julianna Pillemer and Teresa M. Amabile

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Abstract

How do teams working on complex projects get the help they need? Our qualitative investigation of the help provided to project teams at a prominent design firm revealed two distinct helping processes, both characterized by deep, sustained engagement that far exceeds the brief interactions described in the helping literature. Such deep help consisted of (1) guiding a team through a difficult juncture by working with its members in several prolonged, tightly clustered sessions, or (2) path-clearing by helping a team address a persistent deficit via briefer, intermittent sessions throughout a project's life. We present a model theorizing these processes, which has two noteworthy features. First, it emphasizes the socially constructed nature of helping behavior. That is, the parties must establish and maintain a helping frame for their interaction, especially when help-givers are high-status external leaders. Second, the model specifies that the rhythms of deep help—the duration and temporal patterns of giver-receiver interactions—are resource-allocation decisions that also contribute to the social meaning of help. These findings illuminate the theoretical and practical overlap between helping and external leadership in knowledge-intensive project work as well as the role of temporality in the helping process.

Keywords: helping; rhythm; prosocial behavior; external team leadership; social construction; time; qualitative methods; field research; Groups and Teams; Projects; Behavior; Leadership; Social and Collaborative Networks;

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Citation:

Fisher, Colin M., Julianna Pillemer, and Teresa M. Amabile. "Deep Help in Complex Project Work: Guiding and Path-Clearing Across Difficult Terrain." Academy of Management Journal 61, no. 4 (August 2018): 1524–1553.

About the Author

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Teresa M. Amabile
Baker Foundation Professor, Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emerita
Entrepreneurial Management

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More from the Author

  • 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;

    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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  • Working Paper | 2019

    Using Models to Persuade

    Joshua Schwartzstein and Adi Sunderam

    Citation:

    Schwartzstein, Joshua, and Adi Sunderam. "Using Models to Persuade." Working Paper, January 2019.  View Details
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  • Article | Perspectives on Psychological Science

    Educating Leaders Who Make a Difference in the World

    Teresa M. Amabile

    Keywords: creativity; psychology;

    Citation:

    Amabile, Teresa M. "Educating Leaders Who Make a Difference in the World." Perspectives on Psychological Science 14, no. 1 (January 2019): 7–11.  View Details
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