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Why We Work (TED Books) Kindle Edition

by Barry Schwartz (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 out of 5 stars 447 ratings
An eye-opening, groundbreaking tour of the purpose of work in our lives, showing how work operates in our culture and how you can find your own path to happiness in the workplace.

Why do we work? The question seems so simple. But Professor Barry Schwartz proves that the answer is surprising, complex, and urgent.

We’ve long been taught that the reason we work is primarily for a paycheck. In fact, we’ve shaped much of the infrastructure of our society to accommodate this belief. Then why are so many people dissatisfied with their work, despite healthy compensation? And why do so many people find immense fulfillment and satisfaction through “menial” jobs? Schwartz explores why so many believe that the goal for working should be to earn money, how we arrived to believe that paying workers more leads to better work, and why this has made our society confused, unhappy, and has established a dangerously misguided system.

Through fascinating studies and compelling anecdotes, this book dispels this myth. Schwartz takes us through hospitals and hair salons, auto plants and boardrooms, showing workers in all walks of life, showcasing the trends and patterns that lead to happiness in the workplace. Ultimately, Schwartz proves that the root of what drives us to do good work can rarely be incentivized, and that the cause of bad work is often an attempt to do just that.

How did we get to this tangled place? How do we change the way we work? With great insight and wisdom, Schwartz shows us how to take our first steps toward understanding, and empowering us all to find great work.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Invoking plenty of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and even a bit of Bruce Springsteen, Schwartz’s inspiring manifesto forces us to question the very nature of modern-day work… Via fascinating anecdote and plenty of data, the book forcefully claims that how we work isn’t working.” (HuffPost Books)

“A concise 90-page treatise on work that should be required reading for every boss and manager.” (Chicago Tribune)

"Barry Schwartz has long been one of the most astute — and compassionate — observers of American life. In Why We Work, he makes a compelling case for building organizations that run with the grain of human nature rather than against it. If you want to make work more meaningful, for yourself or for your team, you need to read this wise and powerful book.” (Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive )

"In a masterful book that delivers a deep understanding why we work, Schwartz makes a convincing case that getting the answer wrong bears profound costs for employees and managers in any organization. A highly recommended, thought-provoking read.” (Amy Wrsesniewski, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale University )

“A meaningful look at why we’ve lost meaning at work, and where we can find it.” (Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take )

“A delightful, accessible book that glides across centuries of business and industry to reveal the underpinning moral foundations of how and why we work. If you have a job, or hope to have one, read Why We Work” (Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google and author of Work Rules! )

"A call, in a few pointed words, for an expanded, genuine work ethic." (Kirkus)

“Over the next very few years, computerization and automation will rapidly displace millions of white-collar workers…Why We Work outlines how profoundly disruptive these developments will be for a culture based, as ours is, on the work ethic as a central source of our personal worth. Fortunately, Schwartz also shows us how we can restore a sense of intrinsic value to whatever we choose to do with our time when the machines take over.” (Elle)

“This is a wonderfully lucid and compelling book that should be required reading for those who want to take up the challenge of creating organizations that allow for the richer and more meaningful aspects of human nature to flourish. It’s also a useful tool to introspect on why you work and how, in everything you do, you might take steps towards cultivating a more meaningful and fulling life…anyone wishing to make their lives and the world a better place would do well to take this Labor Day to consider Why We Work.” (The Psych Report)

“Packed into 100 pages, that’s a lot to digest and it made my thoughts race as I was reading. Yes, there are surprises in this book, along with practicality presented freshly. I don’t necessarily think this is a top-down book; workers in the trenches might find some inspiration here, too. If that’s what you need to make work better, then grab “Why We Work” and check it out.” (PBG Lifestyle)

“A terse and engaging book…[a] fine book.” (Forbes.com)

About the Author

Barry Schwartz is a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and the author of Why We Work, The Paradox of Choice, and Practical Wisdom. His articles have been published in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Parade Magazine, USA TODAY, Advertising Age, Slate, Scientific American, The New Republic, Harvard Business Review, and The Guardian, and he has appeared on dozens of radio shows, including Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Anderson Cooper 360, and CBS Sunday Morning.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00NZWJE3O
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster/ TED
  • Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 1, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2.2 MB
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 113 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1476784878
  • Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Part of series ‏ : ‎ TED
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 447 ratings

About the author

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Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz

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Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action in the psychology department at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where he has taught for thirty years. He is the author of several leading textbooks on the psychology of learning and memory, as well as a penetrating look at contemporary life, The Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality, and Modern Life. Dr. Schwartz is married and has two children.

Photo by Bill Holsinger-Robinson (Flickr: IMG_2638) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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4.2 out of 5 stars
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Customers find the book highly readable and insightful, explaining the real reasons we work.

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25 customers mention "Readability"25 positive0 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, with one mentioning that the author does a great job making the material understandable.

"“Why We Work” is an elegant book that confronts a collection of some of the seemingly unsolvable and unrelated problems of our time, including:..." Read more

"...the quality that allowed him to keep his book to a 100-page fast and easy read, appropriate for busy managers...." Read more

"Seemed short and summed things up a little too easily but still a good read." Read more

"An excellent short book explaining why people work...." Read more

15 customers mention "Information quality"15 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and informative, explaining the real reasons behind why we work.

"Very insightful. Excellent analysis of how we got where we are, and the consequences of staying here...." Read more

"...He is a true scientist who brings clear thinking to things like why too many choices can hurt us, psychologically...." Read more

"...I can't recommend this book more highly. It explains... the real reasons we work, and why work is the way it is." Read more

"...This book offers solutions which are based on sound research and logical ideas. It is well worth the small sum required to purchase it" Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Tom Sales
    5.0 out of 5 stars An elegant argument for work that works for employers, for the employees themselves and for society as a whole
    Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2015
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    “Why We Work” is an elegant book that confronts a collection of some of the seemingly unsolvable and unrelated problems of our time, including:
    • Why a majority of employees are not engaged in their work
    • Why children are pre-destined to learning based on the perceptions and expectations of their teachers
    • Why doctors and lawyers are forced to become unethical
    • Why products and services are sold aggressively to customers regardless of whether they will benefit them
    • Why unskilled workers don’t have the leeway to have interesting work

    The author Barry Schwartz presents a balanced discussion of how these and other issues have resulted from a mis-read of Adam Smith’s belief set forth in 1776 in “The Wealth of Nations” that people hate to work and do so only for money. This—followed by the scientific movement led by Frederick Turner and the research of B.F. Skinner—has relegated us to the ideology that work by its very nature is not and cannot be fulfilling. He then describes how a variety of theories, inventions, scripts, rules, management controls, work incentives, data-driven schemes, etc. have been used in negative ways to make companies successful because of their efficiency vs. in positive ways to increase the motivation of their employees.

    This view of history and progress—that ideas and technologies that at the time seem correct but are eventually discredited and replaced by new ideas that may also be later discredited—is presented by Schwartz in a straightforward and disarming way that is completely different from most of the political and social science books we read today, where conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans draw themselves into opposing camps—each arguing and baiting the others until nothing is accomplished. Schwartz frames our opportunity differently with this powerful dichotomy—“… we are what society expects us to be. If society asks little of us, it gets little. It is clear that, under these circumstances, we must be sure that we have arranged rules and incentives in a way that induces people to act in ways that serve the objectives of the rule makers and the incentive setters. If society asks more of us, and arranges its social institutions appropriately, it will get more.”

    With only four reviews posted so far, this book is destined to generate some interesting and opposing reviews—based on the diverse work experiences and philosophies of its reviewers. I, for one, am an optimist about this. I’ve spent my career working for a string of organizations that were either already or about to be recognized for their powerful and successful business models. Although they typically already had strong training & development programs, I was hired to open up dialogue that would make their employees even better, more motivated and more self-directed. We built new leadership programs, simulations, job descriptions and social media that got incumbents talking about and improving their best practices and customer experiences to make them ever better. Most of those companies were motivated to get their employees thinking like the workers Schwartz describes who had the flexibility to make their jobs better.

    I highly recommend “Why We Work.” It not only gets you thinking but offers some structure for making things better. It is an elegant book.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • Quest
    4.0 out of 5 stars Great read. Sending it to my family.
    Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2015
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Very insightful. Excellent analysis of how we got where we are, and the consequences of staying here. Would have appreciated a bit more discussion regarding what we can do about it.
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  • Bea Boccalandro
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good if you want fulfilling work for those you manage, and for yourself
    Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2015
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    I recommend this book to anyone seeking to improve their management or to make their own career more fulfilling. It makes a critical correction to the widely accepted, and flawed, view of worker motivation. When trying to explain why the book was powerful to a friend, a fatty-foods analogy (really) generated an “aha!” from her. So I’ll use that explanation hoping it wasn’t the wine she was drinking that made me make sense.

    Remember partially hydrogenated oils? Several generations considered them a positive human invention. By the 1990’s, however, scientists had shown that their manufacturing produced trans fats that damaged our hearts and killed tens of thousands of people a year. The FDA finally banned them this year. A century after we started using them and two decades after we knew they were killing us, we finally rid ourselves of this poison.

    Human progress is replete with damaging forays, like partially hydrogenated oils, that we eventually expose as such and, at the slow tempo of societal progress, reverse our way out of them.

    Today we are deep into a destructive foray regarding our conception of worker motivation. We created an idea two centuries ago that people hate work and do it only for money and other extrinsic rewards. This human invention (which is what an idea is) is not a widespread food ingredient but a ubiquitous workplace element. It doesn’t cause heart attacks (directly, anyway), but it does cause heartache, disgruntlement, disengagement and low productivity. As a result, if your workplace is like most, four out of five of your workers would rather not be working today. The science is in: It’s not human nature to hate work and treating workers as if they do causes damage to them and to business.

    It's unlikely my explanation of the key point of Why We Work has convinced you to rethink what you've been taught about worker motivation. The book, however, will.

    My enthusiasm for this book is not based only on reading it, but also on living it. My job is to help corporate managers bring purpose into the jobs of the employees they manage. Every week I see, and measure, the boost in worker engagement, productivity and wellbeing that results from, essentially, heeding the advice in Why We Work.

    My only issue with the book is that it never fully clears Adam Smith’s name. The father of economics never meant to say that people work out of self-interest alone. The man we think sent us down the wrong path never pointed us down that path. Schwartz acknowledges this late in the book, but only in passing. I would have liked to see a fuller treatment of Smith’s work. This is probably my own side issue stemming from a geeky interest in economic thinkers. In fact, Schwartz’ restrained correction of Smith’s legacy is probably a good thing. It’s the quality that allowed him to keep his book to a 100-page fast and easy read, appropriate for busy managers.

    If trans fats are any indication, it might take another 20 years for Schwartz’ well-documented theory on worker motivation, and where we went wrong, to become widely adopted. You don’t have to wait, however. Invest a couple of hours now reading Why We Work. It will help you pull out of a damaging foray you didn’t know you were down in. It will likely and brighten your work life.
    26 people found this helpful
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  • Doug
    3.0 out of 5 stars Schwartz is great - his book is average
    Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2015
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    I have read two other books by Schwartz (The Paradox of Choice and Practical Wisdom) - I consider both of them to be two of my favorites. He is a true scientist who brings clear thinking to things like why too many choices can hurt us, psychologically. Why We Work did not meet my expectations. I was excited to read it because of my feelings about his earlier books but this one let me down. There does not seem to be anything new beyond what Edward Deci (popularized by Daniel Pink) has written. It feels like a ploy to capitalize on a really good Ted Talk.
    7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Robert
    5.0 out of 5 stars Food for thought
    Reviewed in the Netherlands on November 24, 2020
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    A great speaker and thinker. Schwartz brings a different perspective to agile management than management scholars active in this area. A powerful argument that some social theories about people are as responsible for creating a reality as they are describing the facts of reality.
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for work mentality
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    You can ask am I getting pay enough? Or you can ask how do I make work not work (engagement, meaning, fairness ). This opens so much opportunities to explore and improve work - let your curiosity take over.

    Ideology is more important than technology and poverty of spirit is worse than material poverty. Don’t let others tell you how you should do it, be careful of pervasive ideology.

    A fine is a price. When people are given bad incentives the point of working is defeated
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  • cj sue-wah-sing
    5.0 out of 5 stars Bring the human spirit back to work
    Reviewed in Canada on October 6, 2016
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    Fantastic read and great insight. If you really want to understand how to change your work culture this is the place to start. There was once a time and place where craftsman cared for their work. Since the beginning of the industrialized age, we're sacrificed the art of work for process and efficiency for the highest return on investment. As he so eloquently put it, "Industrialization has been a spectacular human achievement. But as it has relieved material poverty, it has done so at the price of poverty of spirit." It's time to redeem work as an honourable human value.
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  • Balasubramanian
    5.0 out of 5 stars Changed my age old concept
    Reviewed in India on May 26, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    It is a must read. Changes the thinking about why people work. The concept that human nature is an aspect of design/invention rather than a thing to be discovered is excellently explained.
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  • Felipe
    5.0 out of 5 stars Designing our nature through our institutions
    Reviewed in Brazil on September 16, 2015
    Format: KindleVerified Purchase
    "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.
    Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."

    “Satisfied workers are challenged by their work. It forces them to stretch themselves - to go outside their comfort zones. These lucky people think the work they do is fun, often in the way that doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku is fun.
    Why else do people work? Satisfied people do their work because they feel that they are in charge. Their workday offers them a measure of autonomy and discretion. And they use that autonomy and discretion to achieve a level of mastery or expertise. They learn new things, developing both as workers and as people.
    These people do their work because it’s an opportunity for social engagement.”

    “Finally, these people are satisfied with their work because they find what they do meaningful.”

    “Try as they might to find meaning, challenge, and room for autonomy, their work situation defeats them. The way their work is structured means that there really is little reason to do these jobs except for pay.”

    “Ninety percent of adults spend half their waking lives doing things they would rather not be doing at places they would rather not be.”

    “The opportunity to do our work “right”, to do our best, to be encouraged to develop and learn, to feel appreciated by coworkers and supervisors, to feel that our opinions count, to feel that what we do is important, and to have good friends at work”

    “Smith’s belief in the power of incentives led him to argue for organizing work by dividing labor into simple, easily repeated, essentially meaningless units. As long as people were getting paid for what they did, it didn’t matter very much what their jobs entailed.”

    “The lesson here is that just how important material incentives are to people will depend on how the human workplace is structured. And if we structure it in keeping with the false idea that people work only for pay, we’ll create workplaces that make this false idea true. Thus, it’s not true that ‘you just can;t get good help anymore’. It is true that you just can’t get good help anymore when you only give people work to do that is deadening and soulless.”

    “But we do have to worry that human nature will be changed by our theories of human nature. (…) Human nature to have a human nature is very much the product of the society that surrounds us. That human nature is more created than discovered. We ‘design’ human nature, by designing the institutions within which people live.”

    “Alternatively, we might take the view that pretty much every job has the potential to offer people satisfying work. What stands in the way is the incredible efficiency associated with routinized, assembly-line type work.”

    “Meaningful and engaged work emerged because they wanted to craft their jobs into callings, and - and this is key - because it was not forbidden.”

    “Stylists who love their work love its technical complexity and room for creativity.”

    “Jobs can be organized to include variety, complexity, skill, development, and growth. They can be organized to provide the people who do them with a measure of autonomy. And perhaps most important, they can be made meaningful by connecting them to the welfare of others.”

    “based on his analysis of many companies in many different lines of business, what makes for successful companies overlaps substantially with what makes for good work.”

    “when people are happy, they work better and smarter.”

    “When people are in states of negative emotion, in contrast, they hunker down defensively, worried about making mistakes or going wrong. Danger gives us tunnel vision. But when we’re not under threat, and get satisfaction from the work we do, our positive emotional state will enable us to do better work, which in turn will create more positive emotion, which in turn will promote even better work, and so on.”

    “If competition will improve the lives of consumers of goods and services, as no doubt it has, surely it should also improve the lives of producers of goods and services as well. Good practices should drive out bad. To some degree, in some occupations, this has happened.”

    “If you are a business owner who believes Smith’s account of the rank and file, then you design a system to manage them based on this belief. Such a system will rely on wages to motivate, and highly monitored, simplified routine, so that laziness and inattention won’t have disastrous consequences.”

    “it needn’t take a lot to turn bad work into good. And it needn’t take a lot to turn good work into bad.”

    “The role of assumptions about human nature in maintaining these kinds of workplaces is striking. As Jeffrey Pfeffer detailed in ‘The Humana Equation’, we have thirty years of evidence that organizing work differently not only gives the workers the opportunity to get some satisfaction out of what they do, it also enhances the company’s bottom line.”

    “But there is another aspect of many modern work settings that may be even more destructive to good work than routinisation and excessive supervision. That is the reliance on material incentives as the principal motivator of employees. Carefully crafted incentive schemes, designed to ensure top performance, can often produce the opposite - competition among employees, and efforts to game the system and look good on whatever metric is being used to assign pay and bonuses without actually producing the underlying results that the metrics is meant to assess.”

    “But is there an incentive structure that will produce the right amount? The incentive for doctors to produce the right amount is their desire to practice medicine well.”

    “what they do can become the practice norm, so that eventually, even doctors not incentivized to do too little or too much are doing too little or too much.”

    “Somehow, system designers repeatedly fail to appreciate that when material incentives are put front and center, other values essential to motivating employees get crowded out.”

    “The offer of money tells people implicitly that they are operating in the financial/comercial domain, not the social domain.”

    “the more that is written in contracts, the less can be expected without them; the more you write down, the less is taken, or expected, on trust. The solution to incomplete contracts is not more complete ones; it is a nurturing of workplace relationships in which people want to do right by the clients, patients, students, and customers they serve.”

    “largely that as a society we have come to think that we can do without the integrity of professionals if we can just create a good set of practice rules, coupled with a smart scheme of incentives.”

    “Proponents of the first view are folks we might call ‘theory driven’. Guided by some sense of efficient movement, aesthetics, or both, they are inclined to do the ‘ideal’ thing, and have people conform to it. Proponents of the second view are folks we might call ‘data driven.’ They let users of the space tell them, with their behaviour, what the ‘ideal’ thing is.”

    “The “watch where they walk, then pave it” metaphor argues that the empirical data shape the theories people develop. The “if you build it, they will come” metaphor argues that theories shape data. I will attempt to defend the second metaphor.”

    “the cater/create debate”

    “But what people do about their lack of food depends a great deal on how they understand it. Ideas have much to do with whether massive food shortages yield resignation or revolution.
    If we understand the concept of ‘technology’ broadly, as the use of human intelligence to create objects or processes that change the conditions of daily life, then it seems clear that ideas are no less products of technology than are computers. However, there are two things about idea technology that make it different from most ‘thing technology.’ First, because ideas are not objects, to be seen, purchased, and touched, they can suffuse the culture and have profound effects on people before they are even noticed. Second, ideas, unlike things, can have profound effects on people even if the ideas are false.”

    “People whom the French emperor Napoleon termed ideologues were so in love with ideas that they ignored empirical evidence, sometimes right in front of their noses, that might contradict those ideas.”

    “But, in fact, Haidt tells us, they have a moral position before they ever turn their thinking loose on an issue. They use reason as a lawyer does - to make a case for what they already believe, and not as a judge, to tell them what they ought to believe.”

    “Theories about human nature can actually produce changes in how people behave. What this means is that a theory that is false can become true simply by people believing it’s true. The result is that, instead of good data driving out bad data and theories, bad data change social practices until the data become good data, and the theories are validated.”

    “In essence, a “self-fulfilling prophecy” is a “false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour that makes the originally false conception come true.”

    “When social structures are shaped by ideology, ideology can change the world, sometimes in devastating, far-reaching ways.”

    “the concern for doing the right thing originates from a source that the logic of self-interest and incentives cannot encompass. He calls that source of concern “commitment”. To at out of commitment is to do what one thinks is right, regardless of whether it promotes one’s own material circumstances.”

    “The concept of ideology, and the self-fulfilling feedback loops that ideology can give rise to, helps explain, I think, why it is that most workplaces have come to be dominated by excessive reliance on close supervision, routinised work, and incentives.”

    “The constrained vision, put forth by philosopher Thomas Hobbes, focuses on the selfish, aggressive dark side of human nature, and assumes that we cannot change human nature but must instead impose constraints through an all-powerful state, the Leviathan.”

    “human beings are “unfinished animals”. What we can reasonably expect of people depends on how our social institutions “finish” them.”

    “Human beings are not scorpions. People aren’t stuck one way or another. But nor are they free to invent themselves without constraint. When we give shape to our social institutions - our schools, our communities and yes, our workplaces - we also shape human nature. Thus, human nature is to a significant degree the product of human design.”

    “It places a great burden on us when we appreciate that by designing our institutions, we are also designing ourselves - the people who inhabit the institutions - at least in part. But this is a responsibility we must all accept.”

    “When it comes to the design of work, we must ask “Why?” What is the purpose of this work? (…) “What?” Is the product of our work something that will actually provide a benefit? (…) “How?” Are we giving workers the freedom to use their intelligence and direction to help solve the problems they face every workday?”

    “There will always be excuses to stay with what is familiar. There will always be reasons to resist reshaping both our conception of work and our conception of human nature. But I don’t think there are good reasons.”

    “Industrialization has been a spectacular human achievement. But as it has relieved material poverty, it has done so at the price of poverty of spirit. Perhaps this was a necessary price to pay at earlier stages of economic development. But that is no longer the case.”
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