Research Summary

There has been tremendous change in the workplace — ubiquitous technology, 24/7 globalization, hyper-efficiency and now significant changes in work location. Professor Perlow’s research focuses on the implications for the ways we work and live, and what we can do to improve both. She finds we have become less efficient, unable to plan or prioritize work; less effective, with speed substituting for strategy and innovation; more isolated, overwhelmed, harried, as the dividing line between work and home disappears. She further finds that change is possible – change that results in better work and better lives.

As an ethnographer, Professor Perlow does in-depth studies, often for years at a time. Her work to date has been based predominantly on firms in high tech, professional services, and pharmaceuticals. She has studied companies with co-located teams and global teams. She has lived for months at a time in both China and India. She is currently conducting an ethnographic study that began with the sudden shift to virtual in March 2020 and continues today as the organization grapples with how to most effectively make hybrid work work. She has also launched several other projects to gather data about working hybrid and what makes it more effective for both the individuals but also the teams of which they are apart.

Other recent projects include the study of meetings and their deeper roots in the way we organize and execute work; the study of team dynamics as they are experienced simultaneously by team members in different locations (having researchers at multiple sites at the same time); and the effects of being connected 24-7.

Professor Perlow has further been developing and implementing a change process that revolves around empowering groups of people to rally around a collective goal, catalyzing a process of innovating and improving how they do their work. Most recently she is experimenting with data as a source of learning and motivating change.