Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (33 page)

180
from low-income to higher-income neighborhoods
:
The program, Moving to Opportunity, had positive effects on well-being but none on economic self-sufficiency. See J. Ludwig, G. J. Duncan, L. A. Gennetian, L. F. Katz, R. Kessler, J. R. Kling, and L. Sanbomatsu, “Neighborhood Effects on the Long-Term Well-Being of Low-Income Adults,”
Science
337 (September 21, 2012): 1505–10, online edition.

180
unlikely to change the fundamental logic of poverty
:
A synthesis of the existing studies of the impact of microfinance can be found here: M. Duvendack, R. Palmer-Jones, J. G. Copestake, L. Hooper, Y. Loke, and N. Rao, “What Is the Evidence of the Impact of Microfinance on the Well-Being of Poor People?” (London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, 2011).

183
St. John’s Regional Health Center
:
The discussion of St. John’s draws heavily from S. Crute, “Case Study: Flow Management at St. John’s Regional Health Center,”
Quality Matters
(2005). See also “Improving Surgical Flow at St. John’s Regional Health Center: A Leap of Faith,” Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Last modified: 07/13/2011. Posted at
http://www.ihi.org/knowledge/Pages/ImprovementStories/ImprovingSurgical FlowatStJohnsRegionalHealthCenterSpringfieldMOALeapofFaith.aspx
. This case and others are well discussed in E. Litvak, M. C. Long, B. Prenney,
K. K. Fuda, O. Levtzion-Korach, and P. McGlinchey, “Improving Patient Flow and Throughput in California Hospitals Operating Room Services,” Boston University Program for Management of Variability in Health Care Delivery. Guidance document prepared for the California Healthcare Foundation (CHCF), 2007.

185
further improvement followed
:
St. John’s is not some exceptional case. See Mark van Houdenhoven et al., “Improving Operating Room Efficiency by Applying Bin-Packing and Portfolio Techniques to Surgical Case Scheduling,”
Anesthesia and Analgesia
105, no. 3 (2007): 707–14, for a careful analytical example. A review of the literature on better hospital bed scheduling can be found in Brecht Cardoen, Erik Demeulemeester, and Jeroen Beliën, “Operating Room Planning and Scheduling: A Literature Review,”
European Journal of Operational Research
201, no. 3 (2010): 921–32.

186
Many systems require slack
:
John Gribbin,
Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity
(New York: Random House, 2005).

187
use their time “more efficiently”
:
Tom DeMarco has a fascinating discussion of the importance of slack for organizations. “It’s possible to make an organization more efficient without making it better. That’s what happens when you drive out slack. It’s also possible to make an organization a little less efficient and improve it enormously. In order to do that, you need to reintroduce enough slack to allow the organization to breathe, to reinvent itself, and to make necessary change.” See Tom DeMarco,
Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
(New York: Broadway, 2002).

188
a perception that many corporations were “bloated”
:
A great discussion of leveraged buyouts is in Steven N. Kaplan and Per Stromberg, “Leveraged Buyouts and Private Equity,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
23, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 121–46.

188
leveraged buyouts did improve corporate performance
:
F. R. Lichtenberg and D. Siegel, “The Effects of Leveraged Buyouts on Productivity and Related Aspects of Firm Behavior,”
Journal of Financial Economics
27, no. 1 (1990): 165–94.

189
left at the brink of bankruptcy
:
The possibility that leveraged buyouts leave firms in danger when there are economic shocks has been widely discussed. See, for example, Krishna G. Palepu, “Consequences
of Leveraged Buyouts,”
Journal of Financial Economics
27, no. 1 (1990): 247–62.

189
NASA launched the Mars Orbiter
:
See Arthur G. Stephenson et al., “Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board Phase I Report, 44 pp.,” NASA, Washington, D.C. (1999). A readable discussion is here: James Oberg, “Why the Mars Probe Went Off Course,”
IEEE Spectrum
36, no. 12 (1999): 34–39.

192
firefighting organizations have several features in common
:
We owe our understanding of firefighting and several of the examples to Roger E. Bohn and Ramchandran Jaikumar,
Firefighting by Knowledge Workers
(Information Storage Industry Center, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, 2000).

192
“If you look at our resource allocation on traditional projects”
:
N. P. Repenning, “Reducing Cycle Time at Ford Electronics, Part II: Improving Product Development,” case study available from the author (1996).

193
28,000
known
bugs
:
This number is cited in Bohn and Jaikumar,
Firefighting by Knowledge Workers
. It is actually part of a larger controversy about whether or not Microsoft shipped with 61,000 known bugs. See the terrific discussion at
Gripes about Windows 2000
, retrieved from
http://www.computergripes.com/Windows2000.html#28000bugs
.

193
stay perpetually behind
:
A recent study illustrated how judges can also spread themselves too thin and end up juggling too many cases. See Decio Coviello, Andrea Ichino, and Nicola Persico, “Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin: The Impact of Task Juggling on Workers’ Speed of Job Completion” (National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 16502, 2010).

194
The truly efficient laborer
:
Henry David Thoreau quotes. See H. D. Thoreau,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers
(Princeton; N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004).

195
Ten states now ban the use of handheld cell phones while driving
:
State Cell Phone Use and Texting While Driving Laws
(November 2012), retrieved from
http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/cellphone_laws.html
.

195
drivers holding a cell phone
:
Cell Phone Accident Statistics and Texting While Driving Facts,
edgarsnyder.com
, retrieved November
2, 2012, from
http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/cell-phone/cell-phone-statistics.html
.

195
so are drivers using a headset
:
J. Wilson, M. Fang, S. Wiggins, and P. Cooper, “Collision and Violation Involvement of Drivers Who Use Cellular Telephones,”
Traffic Injury Prevention
4, no. 1 (2003): 45–52.

195
missed twice as many traffic signals
:
D. L. Strayer, F. A. Drews, and D. J. Crouch, “A Comparison of the Cell Phone Driver and the Drunk Driver,”
Human Factors
48, no. 2 (2006): 381–91. Follow-up studies have used high-fidelity driving simulators to compare the performance of drivers on the phone (no hands) with drivers who were intoxicated and concluded that the increased risk of distraction by phone is comparable to that found for driving with a blood alcohol level above the legal limit.

195
When Henry Ford famously adopted a 40-hour workweek
:
A nice discussion is in E. Robinson, “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work: 6 Lessons,”
IGDA
(2005), retrieved February 17, 2009. Another readable article is Sara Robinson, “Bring Back the 40-Hour Work Week,”
Slate
, March 14, 2012. Both have a clear position they are pushing, namely, shorter workweeks, and present their cases extremely well.

196
“where a work schedule of 60 or more hours per week”
:
Robinson, “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work.”

196
a software developer notes
:
See “Scrum & Overtime?” posted on the blog
Agile Game Development,
June 9, 2008.

196
the number of patients per medical service worker
:
Diwas S. Kc and Christian Terwiesch, “Impact of Workload on Service Time and Patient Safety: An Econometric Analysis of Hospital Operations,”
Management Science
55, no. 9 (2009): 1486–98.

196
At the end of each interview
:
Seonaidh McDonald, “Innovation, Organisational Learning and Models of Slack,”
Proceedings of the 5th Organizational Learning and Knowledge Conference
(Lancaster University, 2003).

197
when workers sleep less
:
D. T. Wagner, C. M. Barnes, V. K. Lim, and D. L. Ferris, “Lost Sleep and Cyberloafing: Evidence from the Laboratory and a Daylight Saving Time Quasi-Experiment,”
Journal of Applied Psychology
97, no. 5 (2012): 1068.

197
20 percent more time cyberloafing
:
Ibid.

197
When we met him a year ago
:
“Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time,”
Harvard Business Review
, retrieved November 3, 2012, from
http://hbr.org/2007/10/manage-your-energy-not-your-time/ar/1
.

198
a pilot “energy management” program
:
Ibid.

198
look away from the screen every twenty minutes or so
:
This is the so called 20-20-20 rule. See, for example,
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/eyestrain/DS01084/DSECTION=prevention
.

198
“stretched to their limits and beyond with no margin”
:
J. De Graaf, D. Wann, and T. H. Naylor,
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
(San Francisco, Calif.: Berrett-Koehler, 2005).

199
Hiroaki (“Rocky”) Aoki
:
See
http://www.rockyhaoki.com/biogra phy.html
for a brief biography.

201
ten cents more in profit per dollar of revenue
:
This discussion is based on the wonderful HBS case study on Benihana’s business model: W. Earl Sasser and J. Klug,
Benihana of Tokyo
(Boston: Harvard Business School, 1972). See also Ernst Ricardo and Glen M. Schmidt, “Benihana: A New Look at an Old Classic,”
Operations Management Review
1 (2005): 5–28.

201
Sheryl Kimes
:
S. E. Kimes, “Restaurant Revenue Management Implementation at Chevys Arrowhead,”
Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly
45, no. 1 (2004): 52–67.

202
“Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded”
:
Y. Berra,
The Yogi Book
(New York: Workman Publishing, 1997).

207
Bolivia, Peru, and the Philippines
:
D. Karlan, M. McConnell, S. Mullainathan, and J. Zinman,
Getting to the Top of Mind: How Reminders Increase Saving
(National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. w16205, 2010).

208
“impulse savings”
:
“Impulse Savings,” ideas42 case study.

208
the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles
:
Snopes.com
:
“Massachusetts License Renewal” (November 4, 2008), retrieved from
http://www.snopes.com/politics/traffic/massrenewal.asp
.

210
researchers changed the consequences of neglecting the form
:
J. J. Choi, D. Laibson, B. C. Madrian, and A. Metrick, “For Better or for Worse: Default Effects and 401(k) Savings Behavior,” in
Perspectives on the Economics of Aging,
ed. D. A. Wise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 81–126.

211
Keep the Change
:
http://www.bankofamerica.com/promos/jump/ktc_coinjar/
.

211
not by trying to curb their impulses to spend
:
Bank of America’s Keep the Change program: “Keep Your Savings Elsewhere,”
BloggingStocks
, retrieved November 1, 2012, from
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/04/23/bank-of-americas-keep-the-change-program-keep-your-savings-e/
.

213
“cooling off periods”
:
L. E. Willis, “Against Financial Literacy Education” (2008), retrieved from
http://works.bepress.com/lau ren_willis/1/
.

214
Save More Tomorrow
:
R. H. Thaler and S. Benartzi, “Save More Tomorrow™: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving,”
Journal of Political Economy
112, no. S1 (2004): S164–87.

216
a study of payday loans
:
M. Bertrand and A. Morse, “Information Disclosure, Cognitive Biases, and Payday Borrowing,”
The Journal of Finance
66, no. 6 (2011): 1865–93.

217
God’s gift of time
:
R. Levine,
A Geography of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist, or How Every Culture Keeps Time Just a Little Bit Differently
(New York: Basic Books, 1997).

218
“Perceived rule complexity”
:
J. Mata, P. M. Todd, and S. Lippke, “When Weight Management Lasts: Lower Perceived Rule Complexity Increases Adherence,”
Appetite
54, no. 1 (2010): 37–43. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2009.09.004.

219
maize farmers in Kenya
:
E. Duflo, M. Kremer, and J. Robinson,
Nudging Farmers to Use Fertilizer: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Kenya
(No. w15131, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009).

219
researchers created a simple and clever intervention
:
Ibid.

219
cash and bandwidth rich
:
The researchers interpret this in the context of a hyperbolic discounting model, as a solution to our generic challenge of delaying gratification. Our data on bandwidth increasing around harvest suggest that more might be going on here, that the very act of making the decisions at the time when farmers have greatest bandwidth could also improve the quality of decisions.