Leslie A. Perlow
Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership
Senior Associate Dean for Research
Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership
Senior Associate Dean for Research


“The problem is that now everyone's on all the time and we come to expect that of each other. And then, we email each other late at night and we actually may or may not expect a response, initially. But the person getting the e-mail, their response is, 'Well, maybe it’s not urgent but I should respond anyway and maybe it’s because I want to prove that had it been the clients, I was on.'"

Leslie Perlow is the Senior Associate Dean for Research and the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. She has recently launched a new second year elective, Crafting Your Life: The Tactics and Practices of The First 10 Years Post MBA. This course encourages students to be more intentional about their choices, and provides guidance to help them in terms of managing their careers, relationships, and lives.
Professor Perlow’s research focuses on the micro-dynamics of work. She studies how individuals act within an organization – i.e., what do people do all day, how do they spend their time, with whom do they interact– and the consequences for organizations and individuals. She documents individuals’ work practices including the use of technology, meetings, virtual interactions, and managing across cultures with global teams, and explores the implications of these practices for organization productivity, individuals’ careers, and family lives. Professor Perlow has recently launched a large study in a professional service firm to explore the transition from collocated to virtual to the new normal (increasingly hybrid) work. She combines deep inductive qualitative research with data analytics to better understand and empower teams to improve the way they work.
Before joining the Harvard faculty, Professor Perlow was on the faculty of the University of Michigan Business School. She earned her B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Organization Studies from MIT. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a management consultant.
- Featured Work
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Time management is a group endeavor. Harvard Business School Professor Leslie Perlow shares how the payoff goes far beyond morale and retention.How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You WorkDoes it have to be this way? Can't resist checking your smartphone or mobile device? Sure, all this connectivity keeps you in touch with your team and the office--but at what cost? In "Sleeping with Your Smartphone," Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow reveals how you can disconnect and become more productive in the process. In fact, she shows that you can devote more time to your personal life and accomplish more at work.Leslie Perlow: Thriving in an overconnected worldWhile email and mobile technology have greatly accelerated the way we do business, Leslie Perlow argues that the always “on” mentality can have a long-term detrimental effect on many organizations. In her sociological experiments at BCG and other organizations, Perlow found that if the team – rather than just individuals - collectively rallies around a goal of personal value, it unleashes a process that creates better work and better lives.The Personalization Challenge: Business culture and mobile securityVideo Interview: EIU Editor Riva Richmond interviews Harvard Business School Professor Leslie Perlow about the risks to organisations from the undirected, always-connected work enabled by mobile devices.Leslie talks about the pervasive responsiveness trap in the workforce.
“The problem is that now everyone's on all the time and we come to expect that of each other. And then, we email each other late at night and we actually may or may not expect a response, initially. But the person getting the e-mail, their response is, 'Well, maybe it’s not urgent but I should respond anyway and maybe it’s because I want to prove that had it been the clients, I was on.'"CBS Boston segment about Leslie Perlow's work at Boston Consulting Group. - Books
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- Perlow, Leslie A. Sleeping with Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24-7 Habit and Change the Way you Work. Harvard Business Review Press, 2012. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. When You Say Yes But Mean No: How Silencing Conflict Wrecks Relationships and Companies. New York: Crown Business, 2003. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. View Details
- Journal Articles
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- Whillans, Ashley V., Leslie Perlow, and Aurora Turek. "Experimenting During the Shift to Virtual Team Work: Learnings from How Teams Adapted Their Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic." Information and Organization (in press). View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, Constance Noonan Hadley, and Eunice Eun. "Stop the Meeting Madness: How to Free Up Time for Meaningful Work." Harvard Business Review 95, no. 4 (July–August 2017): 62–69. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. "Manage Your Team's Collective Time." Harvard Business Review 92, no. 6 (June 2014): 23–25. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Erin L. Kelly. "Toward a Model of Work Redesign for Better Work and Better Life." Work and Occupations 41, no. 1 (February 2014): 111–134. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Jessica L. Porter. "Making Time Off Predictable—and Required." Harvard Business Review 87, no. 10 (October 2009). View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Nelson Repenning. "The Dynamics of Silencing Conflict." Research in Organizational Behavior 29 (2009): 195–223. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, Jody Hoffer Gittell, and Nancy R. Katz. "Contextualizing Patterns of Work Group Interaction: Toward a Nested Theory of Structuration." Organization Science 15, no. 5 (September–October 2004): 520–536. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Stephanie Williams. "Is Silence Killing Your Company?" Harvard Business Review 81, no. 5 (May 2003): 52–58. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, Gerardo Okhuyson, and Nelson Repenning. "The Speed Trap: Exploring the Relationship between Decision Making and the Temporal Context." Academy of Management Journal 45, no. 5 (October 2002): 931–955. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and John Weeks. "Who's Helping Whom: A Comparison of Helping Behavior among American and Indian Software Engineers." Journal of Organizational Behavior 23, no. 4 (June 2002): 345–361. View Details
- Staudenmayer, Nancy, Marcie Tyre, and Leslie Perlow. "Time to Change: Temporal Shifts As Enablers of Organizational Change." Organization Science 13, no. 5 (September–October 2002). View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. "Time to Coordinate: Toward an Understanding of Work-Time Standards and Norms in a Multi-Country Study of Software Engineers." Work and Occupations 28, no. 1 (February 2001). View Details
- Ancona, Deborah, Gerardo Okhuyson, and Leslie Perlow. "Time-out: Taking Time to Integrate Temporal Research." Academy of Management Review 26, no. 4 (October 2001): 512–529. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. "The Time Famine: Towards a Sociology of Work Time." Administrative Science Quarterly 44, no. 1 (March 1999): 57–81. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. "Boundary Control: The Social Ordering of Work and Family Time in a High-Tech Corporation." Administrative Science Quarterly 43, no. 2 (June 1998): 328–357. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. "Putting the Work Back into Work/Family." Group & Organization Management 20, no. 2 (1995): 227–239. View Details
- Book Chapters
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- Perlow, Leslie. "Collaborative Implementation: 'What If,' Asked George?" In Research Alive: Exploring Generative Moments in Doing Qualitative Research. Vol. 27, edited by Arne Carlsen and Jane E. Dutton. Advances in Organization Studies. Copenhagen Business School Press, 2011. View Details
- Trefalt, Spela, and Leslie Perlow. "Learning from Women Who Make It Work: A Call for Dynamic Flexibility." In Qualitative Organizational Research: Best Papers from the Davis Conference on Qualitative Research, edited by K. Elsbach, 227–251. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing (IAP), 2005. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. "Studying Work Groups in India, China, and Hungary." In Gaining Access: A Practical Guide for Field Researchers, edited by Martha S. Feldman, Jeannine Bell, and Michele Tracy Berger. Altamira Press, 2003. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and L. Bailyn. "The Senseless Submergence of Difference: Engineers, Their Work and Their Careers." In Between Technology and Society: Technical Workers in Modern Workplaces, edited by B. Barley and J. Orr. Ithaca, NY: IRL Press, 1997. View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Zhang, Ting, and Leslie A. Perlow. "Developmental Relationships." Harvard Business School Background Note 421-045, October 2020. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Gerald Chertavian." Harvard Business School Case 421-030, August 2020. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Sangu Delle." Harvard Business School Case 421-031, August 2020. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Sheena Gupta (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 421-029, August 2020. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Sheena Gupta (A)." Harvard Business School Case 421-028, August 2020. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "The Power of Enduring Relationships." Harvard Business School Case 420-070, January 2020. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Thierry Porté." Harvard Business School Case 420-074, November 2019. (Revised October 2020.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Matthew G. Preble. "Spencer Fertig." Harvard Business School Case 420-068, October 2019. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Jessica Deckinger (MBA 2008)." Harvard Business School Case 420-069, October 2019. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Grant Freeland." Harvard Business School Case 420-067, October 2019. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Mia Mends." Harvard Business School Case 420-065, October 2019. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., Eunice Eun, and Matthew G. Preble. "Noah Fisher (MBA 2016)." Harvard Business School Case 420-049, September 2019. (Revised January 2020.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., Eunice Eun, and Matthew Preble. "Mary Elizabeth Carter (MBA 2017)." Harvard Business School Case 420-048, September 2019. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, Jeff Steiner, and Matthew Preble. "Gina Wilcox." Harvard Business School Case 420-045, September 2019. (Revised September 2020.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Matthew Preble. "Sonya Brown (MBA 2002)." Harvard Business School Case 420-051, September 2019. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., Eunice Eun, and Matthew G. Preble. "Ming Min Hui (MBA 2015)." Harvard Business School Case 420-050, September 2019. (Revised January 2020.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, Jeff Steiner, and Nathaniel Schwalb. "Joseph Kahn." Harvard Business School Case 420-044, August 2019. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, Jeff Steiner, and Olivia Hull. "Christopher Crosby." Harvard Business School Case 420-043, August 2019. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, and Eunice Eun. "Phuc Huynh and Teach for Vietnam (A)." Harvard Business School Case 419-036, October 2018. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie, Eunice Eun, and Wenjie Ma. "Srivathsan Canchi at eBay Inc." Harvard Business School Case 416-006, September 2015. (Revised August 2016.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Kerry Herman. "George Martin at The Boston Consulting Group (C)." Harvard Business School Supplement 410-118, April 2010. (Revised May 2010.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Kerry Herman. "George Martin at The Boston Consulting Group (A)." Harvard Business School Case 410-112, April 2010. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Kerry Herman. "George Martin at The Boston Consulting Group (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 410-117, April 2010. View Details
- Snook, Scott A., Leslie A. Perlow, and Brian DeLacey. "Coach K: A Matter of the Heart." Harvard Business School Case 406-044, August 2005. (Revised December 2005.) View Details
- Snook, Scott A., Leslie A. Perlow, and Brian DeLacey. "Coach Knight: The Will to Win." Harvard Business School Case 406-043, August 2005. (Revised December 2005.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Daisy Wademan. "Pat Anderson." Harvard Business School Case 405-033, September 2004. (Revised October 2004.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and David Ager. "Cat is out of the Bag, The: KANA and the Layoff Gone Awry (A)." Harvard Business School Case 403-117, January 2003. (Revised April 2004.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Time Distribution and Interaction Patterns for PEARL Project Team: Work Patterns at Ditto (D)." Harvard Business School Compilation 404-058, September 2003. (Revised March 2004.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "PEARL Project, The: Work Patterns at Ditto (A)." Harvard Business School Compilation 404-055, September 2003. (Revised March 2004.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Laura Barr: Work Patterns at Ditto (B)." Harvard Business School Compilation 404-056, September 2003. (Revised March 2004.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Max Green: Work Patterns at Ditto (C)." Harvard Business School Compilation 404-057, September 2003. (Revised March 2004.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Elizabeth Kind. "New HP, The: The Clean Room and Beyond." Harvard Business School Case 404-064, February 2004. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Work Patterns at Ditto (TN) (A), (B), (C), and (D)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 404-059, September 2003. (Revised October 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Versity.com (TN)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 404-061, September 2003. (Revised October 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Thomas J. DeLong. "Anne F. Baird." Harvard Business School Supplement 403-086, November 2002. (Revised October 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Versity.com." Harvard Business School Case 403-132, February 2003. (Revised October 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Peter Jacobs at Versity.com." Harvard Business School Case 403-133, February 2003. (Revised October 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and David Ager. "Cat is out of the Bag, The: Kana and the Layoff Gone Awry (TN) (A), (B), and (C)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 404-060, September 2003. (Revised October 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and David Ager. "Cat is out of the Bag, The: KANA and the Layoff Gone Awry (B)." Harvard Business School Case 403-118, January 2003. (Revised October 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and David Ager. "Cat is out of the Bag, The: KANA and the Layoff Gone Awry (C)." Harvard Business School Case 403-119, January 2003. (Revised October 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Managing the Competing Goals of Work and Life." Harvard Business School Module Note 404-063, September 2003. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Howie Cohen at Versity.com." Harvard Business School Case 403-134, February 2003. (Revised September 2003.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A. "Profiles of the Class of 1976 (TN)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 404-062, September 2003. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie. "The Danger of Silencing Conflict at Work." Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Class Lecture, 2003. Electronic. (Faculty Lecture: HBSP Product Number 5615C.) View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Thomas J. DeLong. "Linda Fay Harris." Harvard Business School Supplement 403-081, November 2002. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Thomas J. DeLong. "Samuel Allston." Harvard Business School Supplement 403-082, November 2002. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Thomas J. DeLong. "Patricia Hughes Mason." Harvard Business School Supplement 403-083, November 2002. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Thomas J. DeLong. "Matthew J. Martin." Harvard Business School Supplement 403-084, November 2002. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Thomas J. DeLong. "Richard Oliva." Harvard Business School Supplement 403-085, November 2002. View Details
- Perlow, Leslie A., and Thomas J. DeLong. "Profiles of the Class of 1976." Harvard Business School Case 403-087, November 2002. View Details
- Research Summary
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There has been tremendous change in the workplace — ubiquitous technology, 24/7 globalization and hyper-efficiency. 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, as technology (paradoxically) reduces real human interaction; overwhelmed, unable to plan or collaborate; and more 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.
Recent projects include 1) the sudden transition to virtual work and all the implications for teams, in particular team collaboration and learning; 2) the study of meetings and their deeper roots in the way we organize and execute work; 3) 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); 4) 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 analytics as a source of learning and change.
Nearly ten years ago, she embarked on an ambitious project to understand the temporal demands in professional service work and whether change was possible. People in professional service firms work long hours and are expected to make work their top priority. If something comes up, they stay late. When not at work, they check their wireless devices to ensure that nothing new has come up. Moreover, they put up with this pressure to always be available because they believe that to be successful in a professional service firm, you have to be accessible and willing to jump into action whenever called. But does it have to be this way? To explore this question, Professor Perlow conducted a set of experiments, attempting to create predictable time off. She discovered that change could be made such that not only individuals but also the organization benefited. Based on the success of these experiments, the firm has begun to transform its world-wide organization culture into one that values people's personal lives as part of making the work itself most effective and efficient. Professor Perlow has continued to build on these learnings, continuing to create change—and study the change process—in a wide range of organizations and industries.
For recent updates, visit LeslieAPerlow.com - Awards & Honors
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Recipient of the 2012 Work Life Legacy Award from the Families and Work Institute.
- Additional Information
- Areas of Interest
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- corporate culture
- ethnography
- leading change
- qualitative research
- work/family balance
- conflict
- conflict management
- cross-cultural/cross-border
- entrepreneurship
- gender
- group dynamics
- interactions
- interactive communication
- leadership
- organizational behavior
- organizational development
- organizational learning
- power and influence
- professional service firms
Additional Topics - In The News