'Fixing the Overload Problem at Work,' Winner of MIT Sloan Management Review 2021 Beckhard Prize

Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen win award for best MIT SMR article on planned change and organizational development.

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Sep 08, 2021, 12:10 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today the editors of MIT Sloan Management Review announced that Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen are the winners of the 2021 Richard Beckhard Memorial Prize. The prize is awarded to the authors of the most outstanding MIT SMR article on planned change and organizational development published from fall 2019 to summer 2020.

MIT SMR awarded the prize for the article "Fixing the Overload Problem at Work" from the summer 2020 issue. Kelly is Distinguished Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School, and Moen holds the McKnight Endowed Presidential Chair in Sociology at the University of Minnesota.

The prize-winning article results from an experiment the authors designed to measure the different effects on work redesigned collectively by team members and work conducted as usual. The authors found that the redesign teams reported that they felt they had more control over when and where they worked and that their managers were more supportive of their personal and family lives. In addition, they reported getting more exercise, sleep, and social time — and they were significantly less likely than their control group counterparts to leave the organization. The experiment was described in more detail in Kelly and Moen's award-winning book, Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do About It (2020, Princeton University Press).

"Such rethinking about work is particularly timely as we slowly emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic with new learning about when, where, and how our work can be accomplished," the judges say. "Moreover, Dick Beckhard would surely approve… He was a strong advocate of self-organized work teams as a key component of productive organization change; Dick held that we are not solitary creatures but members of shared communities, accountable to and dependent on one another."

The authors identified three actions that managers must take to overcome the problem: provide employees with greater control over their work; give employees clear direction on their work goals; and, critically, develop managers who genuinely care and support their employees in their personal lives and priorities.

This year's panel of judges consisted of distinguished members of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty: retired senior lecturer Cyrus Gibson; David J. McGrath Jr. Professor of Management and Innovation Kate Kellogg; and Erwin H. Schell Professor of Management John Van Maanen.

About Richard Beckhard and the Beckhard Prize
One of the founders and architects of the field of organizational development, Professor Richard Beckhard was a member of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty for more than 20 years. A longtime friend of MIT Sloan Management Review, Beckhard was known for his efforts to help organizations function in a more humane and high-performing manner and to empower people to be agents of change.

About MIT Sloan Management Review
At MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR), we explore how leadership and management are transforming in a disruptive world. We help thoughtful leaders capture the exciting opportunities — and face down the challenges — created as technological, societal, and environmental forces reshape how organizations operate, compete, and create value.

CONTACT:
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SOURCE MIT Sloan Management Review