A Selection of our books

Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet

In this groundbreaking book, which serves to introduce the GoodWork Project as a whole, the focus is on findings obtained from lengthy in-depth interviews with over 100 journalists and 100 geneticists. Genetics emerges as a profession that is well aligned; nearly all interest groups want the same things from it. In contrast, journalism emerges as a profession that is massively misaligned; journalists attempting to carry out the mission of their profession are constantly thwarted because of the diverse and often contradictory pressures on them. Such times of stress can motivate the creation of new roles and institutions that allow professionals to carry out good work, even during times when things are changing very quickly, market forces are very powerful, and our sense of time and space is being altered by technology. The authors indicate how lessons from these two professions can be applied in all of our work lives, to bring about work that is both excellent in quality and also carried out in an ethically responsible manner.

Making Good: How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work

You’re young, ambitious, entering the field of your dreams; you’re on your own, the competition is fierce – and then you see your chance: the big story, the big role, the big discovery. But you’ll have to cut a few corners, bend the rules, cheat a bit. What choices will you make? After studying more than a hundred young people launching their careers, these longtime researchers of “good work”- work that is both skillful and honorable—find unsettling answers. Although young workers know what it takes to do good work, they don’t always feel they can follow the ethical route. “Later, when I’m successful,” is their implicit promise. Making Good explores the choices confronting young workers who join the ranks of three dynamic professions—journalism, science, and acting and looks at how the novices navigate moral dilemmas posed by a demanding, frequently lonely, professional life. The authors also uncover striking comparisons between these young professionals and the veterans in their fields -most notably, older workers recall inspiring models and mentors, while today’s beginners see themselves as on their own. With extensive insights into how young workers view their respective domains, the nature of their ambitions, the sacrifices they are willing to make, and the lines they are prepared to cross, this study will prove instructive to young employees and employers alike, as well as to those who wish to understand the shifting moral and social character of the working world.

Wendy Fischman, Becca Solomon, and Deborah Greenspan are researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Howard Gardner is Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Responsibility at Work

Filled with original essays by Howard Gardner, William Damon, Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi, and Jeanne Nakamura and based on a large-scale research project, the GoodWork® Project, Responsibility at Work reflects the information gleaned from in-depth interviews with more than 1,200 people from nine different professions—journalism, genetics, theatre, higher education, philanthropy, law, medicine, business, and pre-collegiate education. The book reveals how motivation, culture, and professional norms can intersect to produce work that is personally, socially, and economically beneficial. At the heart of the study is the revelation that the key to good work is responsibility—taking ownership for one’s work and its wider impact.

GoodWork: Theory and Practice

In 1995, psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and Howard Gardner launched the GoodWork Project. In the succeeding decade, they and their colleagues at five universities conducted indepth interviews of over 1200 professionals drawn from nine different professions. Findings from the study have been reported in several books and several dozen articles. Since the completion of the initial phase of the Project, many of the researchers on the GoodWork Project have carried out studies and launched applications that grow directly out of the findings from the original Project. To commemorate 15 years of the project, researcher with a lengthy connection to the Project have assembled the present collection. Included are a brief history of the Project, reflections by the three principal investigators, expansions of the theory, critiques of the theory, and several articles that focus on ways in which the findings have been applied in education and related domains.