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Rethinking Work

By Barry Schwartz

Aug. 28, 2015

HOW satisfied are we with our jobs?

Gallup regularly polls workers around the world to find out. Its survey last year found that almost 90 percent of workers were either “not engaged” with or “actively disengaged” from their jobs. Think about that: Nine out of 10 workers spend half their waking lives doing things they don’t really want to do in places they don’t particularly want to be.

Why? One possibility is that it’s just human nature to dislike work. This was the view of Adam Smith, the father of industrial capitalism, who felt that people were naturally lazy and would work only for pay. “It is the interest of every man,” he wrote in 1776 in “The Wealth of Nations,” “to live as much at his ease as he can.”

This idea has been enormously influential. About a century later, it helped shape the scientific management movement, which created systems of manufacture that minimized the need for skill and close attention — things that lazy, pay-driven workers could not be expected to have.

Today, in factories, offices and other workplaces, the details may be different but the overall situation is the same: Work is structured on the assumption that we do it only because we have to. The call center employee is monitored to ensure that he ends each call quickly. The office worker’s keystrokes are overseen to guarantee productivity.

I think that this cynical and pessimistic approach to work is entirely backward. It is making us dissatisfied with our jobs — and it is also making us worse at them. For our sakes, and for the sakes of those who employ us, things need to change.

To start with, I don’t think most people recognize themselves in Adam Smith’s description of wage-driven idlers. Of course, we care about our wages, and we wouldn’t work without them. But we care about more than money. We want work that is challenging and engaging, that enables us to exercise some discretion and control over what we do, and that provides us opportunities to learn and grow. We want to work with colleagues we respect and with supervisors who respect us. Most of all, we want work that is meaningful — that makes a difference to other people and thus ennobles us in at least some small way.

We want these things so much that we may even be willing to take home a thinner pay envelope to get them. Lawyers leave white-shoe firms to work with the underclass and underserved. Doctors abandon cushy practices to work in clinics that serve poorer areas. Wall Street analysts move to Washington to work as economic advisers in government.

You might object that those are examples of professionals — people who have the financial security to care about more than just their paychecks and the privilege of working in fields in which it is possible to find meaning and personal satisfaction. What about the janitor? The phone solicitor? The hairdresser? The fast-food worker?

I submit that they, too, are looking for something more than wages. About 15 years ago, the Yale organizational behavior professor Amy Wrzesniewski and colleagues studied custodians in a major academic hospital. Though the custodians’ official job duties never even mentioned other human beings, many of them viewed their work as including doing whatever they could to comfort patients and their families and to assist the professional staff members with patient care. They would joke with patients, calm them down so that nurses could insert IVs, even dance for them. They would help family members of patients find their way around the hospital.

The custodians received no financial compensation for this “extra” work. But this aspect of the job, they said, was what got them out of bed every morning. “I enjoy entertaining the patients,” said one. “That’s what I enjoy the most.”

Similarly, a few years ago the Wharton management professor Adam Grant studied a group of college students who worked as phone solicitors, calling alumni to ask for contributions to their university. As an experiment, Professor Grant arranged for a recent graduate who had attended the university on a scholarship funded by such solicitation efforts to meet the students. The graduate gave a short talk about how the scholarship had affected his life and how grateful he was for their solicitation efforts.

Professor Grant found that the money that the students raised increased 171 percent afterward. Again, there was no added compensation for the harder work — just a deeper sense of purpose.

These are just two examples from a literature of cases demonstrating that when given the chance to make their work meaningful and engaging, employees jump at it, even if it means that they have to work harder. Such cases should serve to remind us there is a human cost to routinizing and depersonalizing work. Too often, instead of being able to take pride in what they do, and derive satisfaction from doing it well, workers have little to show for their efforts aside from their pay.

But perhaps there is an upside to monotonous, routinized work. Is it possible that what we lose in work satisfaction, we gain in efficiency?

This, again, is what Adam Smith thought. In his famous example of the pin factory, he extolled the virtues of the division of labor: “One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head.” Our work experience might be poorer, but we — or at least our bosses — would be richer.

Yet more than 200 years later, there is still little evidence of this satisfaction-efficiency trade-off. In fact, most evidence points in the opposite direction. In his 1998 book, “The Human Equation,” which reviewed numerous studies across dozens of different industries, the Stanford organizational behavior professor Jeffrey Pfeffer found that workplaces that offered employees work that was challenging, engaging and meaningful, and over which they had some discretion, were more profitable than workplaces that treated employees as cogs in a production machine.

For example, he cited a study of 136 companies across many different industries that had initial public offerings in 1988. It found that companies that placed a high value on human resources were almost 20 percent more likely to survive for at least five years than those that did not. Similar differences in success were found in studies that compared the management practices of steel mills. And a study of United States apparel manufacturers found that sales growth was more than 50 percent higher in companies with enlightened management practices than in those that did things the old-fashioned way.

The findings were similar in studies of semiconductor manufacturing, oil refining and various service industries. And comparable findings were documented more recently by the Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer in his 2009 book “High Commitment High Performance.”

You get the distinct impression that if you’re trying to decide where to make an investment, the best place to look is those annual lists of the 100 best places to work. When employees have work that they want to do, they are happier. And when they are happier, their work is better, as is the company’s bottom line.

This is admittedly not news. But that only raises a deeper question: In the face of longstanding evidence that routinization and an overemphasis on pay lead to worse performance in the workplace, why have we continued to tolerate and even embrace that approach to work?

The answer, I think, is that the ideas of Adam Smith have become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: They gave rise to a world of work in which his gloomy assumptions about human beings became true. When you take all opportunities for meaning and engagement out of the work that people do, why would they work, except for the wage? What Smith and his descendants failed to realize is that rather than exploiting a fact about human nature, they were creating a fact about human nature.

The transformation I have in mind goes something like this: You enter an occupation with a variety of aspirations aside from receiving your pay. But then you discover that your work is structured so that most of those aspirations will be unmet. Maybe you’re a call center employee who wants to help customers solve their problems — but you find out that all that matters is how quickly you terminate each call. Or you’re a teacher who wants to educate kids — but you discover that only their test scores matter. Or you’re a corporate lawyer who wants to serve his client with care and professionalism — but you learn that racking up billable hours is all that really counts.

Pretty soon, you lose your lofty aspirations. And over time, later generations don’t even develop the lofty aspirations in the first place. Compensation becomes the measure of all that is possible from work. When employees negotiate, they negotiate for improved compensation, since nothing else is on the table. And when this goes on long enough, we become just the kind of creatures that Adam Smith thought we always were. (Even Smith, in one passage, seemed to acknowledge this possibility, noting that mindless, routinized work typically made people “stupid and ignorant.”)

The truth is that we are not money-driven by nature. Studies show that people are less likely to help load a couch into a van when you offer a small payment than when you don’t, because the offer of pay makes their task a commercial transaction rather than a favor to another human being. And people are less likely to agree to have a nuclear waste site in their community when you offer to pay them, because the offer of compensation undermines their sense of civic duty.

If people were always paid to load couches into vans, the notion of a favor would soon vanish. Money does not tap into the essence of human motivation so much as transform it. When money is made the measure of all things, it becomes the measure of all things.

To be sure, people should be adequately compensated for their work. Recent efforts across the country to achieve a significant increase in the minimum wage represent real social progress. But in securing such victories for working people, we should not lose sight of the aspiration to make work the kind of activity people embrace, rather than the kind of activity they shun.

How can we do this? By giving employees more of a say in how they do their jobs. By making sure we offer them opportunities to learn and grow. And by encouraging them to suggest improvements to the work process and listening to what they say.

But most important, we need to emphasize the ways in which an employee’s work makes other people’s lives at least a little bit better (and, of course, to make sure that it actually does make people’s lives a little bit better). The phone solicitor is enabling a deserving student to go to a great school. The hospital janitor is easing the pain and suffering of patients and their families. The fast-food worker is lifting some of the burden from a harried parent.

Work that is adequately compensated is an important social good. But so is work that is worth doing. Half of our waking lives is a terrible thing to waste.

A professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and the author of the forthcoming book “Why We Work.”

Reason and Meaning

Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life, rethinking work.

Swarthmore College Professor Barry Schwartz published an op-ed in last Sunday’s New York Times entitled, “ Rethinking Work. ” The essay begins by noting that a “survey last year found that almost 90 percent of workers were either “not engaged” with or “actively disengaged” from their jobs.” So 9 out of 10 “workers spend half their waking lives doing things they don’t really want to do in places they don’t particularly want to be.” But Why?

Perhaps human are lazy and just dislike work as Adam Smith maintained. This idea has been so influential that today most the structure of the workplace assumes we don’t really want to do our work. Thus workers are monitored to ensure they are actually working, and that they are as efficient and productive as possible. But Schwartz objects that this approach “is making us dissatisfied with our jobs — and it is also making us worse at them. For our sakes, and for the sakes of those who employ us, things need to change.” (No doubt this attitude has also been informed by the Protestant work ethic .)

Schwartz believes that Smith was wrong. First of all, people want more from their work than money; they want challenging, engaging and, most importantly, meaningful work that makes a difference to others and makes us feel better about ourselves. In fact, many people willingly accept less money for such work. Studies show that even workers in low-paying jobs do work without compensation in order to find more meaning on the job.

About 15 years ago, the Yale organizational behavior professor Amy Wrzesniewski and colleagues studied custodians in a major academic hospital. Though the custodians’ official job duties never even mentioned other human beings, many of them viewed their work as including doing whatever they could to comfort patients and their families and to assist the professional staff members with patient care. They would joke with patients, calm them down so that nurses could insert IVs, even dance for them. They would help family members of patients find their way around the hospital.

Schwartz also cites studies that show how people work harder if they think their work is meaningful. (To be fair, Schwartz doesn’t mention that many work harder for more money too.) So there is a cost to what Karl Marx called alienated labor. “Too often, instead of being able to take pride in what they do, and derive satisfaction from doing it well, workers have little to show for their efforts aside from their pay.”

So when employees like their work, they are happier, and they work better which is better for the company too. But as this is self-evident, Schwartz wonders why we embrace Smith’s view of work. Schwartz answers that Smith’s view creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The world of work is often so gloomy that people do hate it. Even highly skilled professionals like physicians, lawyers or professors may want to do good work, but find that only satisfying the bottom line matters to their employers. They are actively discouraged from spending time with patients, clients, or students. After a while, they start to work only for the money. But this is contrary to our nature.

Studies show that people are less likely to help load a couch into a van when you offer a small payment than when you don’t, because the offer of pay makes their task a commercial transaction rather than a favor to another human being. And people are less likely to agree to have a nuclear waste site in their community when you offer to pay them, because the offer of compensation undermines their sense of civic duty.

Of course, people do deserve adequate compensation for their work, so things like raising the minimum wage represent social progress. But we should still try to make work satisfying. We can do this by giving people more autonomy and the chance to learn on the job. Most importantly, we need to make work meaningful so that people feel good about doing it. As Schwartz puts it, “Work that is adequately compensated is an important social good. But so is work that is worth doing. Half of our waking lives is a terrible thing to waste.”

Addendum – One can’t read this article without thinking about Karl Marx’s famous work “Alienated Labor.” And one can’t respond adequately to this without at least considering Marx’s insights . That’s what I’ll do in tomorrow’s post .

Show Me the Meaning! A Review of Barry Schwartz’s Why We Work

Image: Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr

This article was originally published on The Psych Report before it became part of the Behavioral Scientist in 2017.

T he television show Mad Men gets much of its insight from holding up a bygone work era to spotlight just how much societal views have changed in a short time and how unenlightened those notions seem today in retrospect. But a thorny exception to our present day enlightenment is the notion that we work only for remuneration. How is this notion not as jarringly antiquated as seeing a pregnant Betty Draper smoking and drinking?

The idea that people only work for money is sadly persistent today—all the more so despite decades of research highlighting the variety of satisfactions people derive beyond the paycheck. What’s even more nefarious is how persistent the idea that people work only for pay is, even when it’s contradicted by introspection and lived experience. How did we get here and why is the idea that we work only for money so persistent?

The puzzle and utter exasperation of this question animates Why We Work , the most recent treatise by Barry Schwartz. The release of this book is well-timed for Labor Day in that it’s asking important and fundamental questions about how our assumptions about work may be one of the biggest barriers to our collective and individual well-being. This is the most recent incarnation of a theme Schwartz has touched on throughout a career meditating on incentives and self-fulfilling prophesies.

Why We Work is an elaboration upon Shwartz’s most recent TED talk , which he gave in Vancouver in 2014. TED is providing this book format as a way for people to go deeper into the topic than the brief talk would allow. The short book format lends itself nicely to rooting the conversation more deeply in intellectual thought, fleshing out compelling examples of how, in what are seemingly routine and mundane jobs, individuals seek meaning in their work beyond a simply a paycheck.

The power of intrinsic motivation in the workplaces is well-documented by the scientific literature. I suspect many will come away from Why We Work with a greater insight into how the importance of meaning and intrinsic value people get from work can actually be leveraged to enhance the bottom line for many companies. Ironically, this is a critique squarely within the dominant economic logic that Schwartz is pushing us to question. If intrinsic motivation is truly better for the bottom line why hasn’t this spread like wildfire in a capitalistic system geared towards maximizing profits? The true value of this book is to push the reader to think deeper than this.

Indeed, the larger puzzle that Schwartz is attempting to tackle and the more central argument of the book is the powerful and nefarious role “idea technology” can have on human behavior. Here Schwartz is referring not just to the advent of the iPhone or any specific technological gadget that happens to take hold, but more broadly to the “use of human intelligence to create objects or processes that change the conditions of daily life.” Here the “ideology” that people only work for pay, then has implications for the manner in which labor itself is constructed (e.g., removal of the aspects of work that engender intrinsic satisfaction) in a way that becomes self-fulfilling (e.g., people work only for the pay because the intrinsic satisfactions of work have been removed). In this way, the aspects of human nature that are brought out are intimately linked with the social institutions that are set-up to guide work behavior.

How is the notion that we work only for money not as jarringly antiquated as seeing a pregnant Betty Draper smoking and drinking?

What is to be done? Here Schwartz’s diagnosis directs us to change the operating assumptions of our social institutions and calls for individuals to strive in their daily lives to get more in touch with the aspects of work that provide meaning and satisfaction. We are encouraged to think about maximizing well-being instead of efficiency or economic value. Here Why We Work falls a bit short in terms of providing a clear guide for how we can be more intentional about the social ecologies we create and choose to inhabit. The application of idea technology pervades almost every aspect of human life that social institutions govern (e.g., how we eat, our leisure, etc.). There are enormous and powerful policy implications here that the book could paint a clear path forward for those of us who are persuaded by the book’s diagnosis.

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. Will the power of Schwartz’s prose be enough to for this insight to break through a culture where economic logic is so dominant and pervasive? I hope so—so much is at stake and 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 .

Disclosure: Barry Schwartz is a member of The Psych Report’s Advisory Board.

Sanford DeVoe

Sanford DeVoe is an associate professor of management and organizations at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. His research focuses on the psychological dimensions of incentives within organizations, including looking at the tradeoffs between time and money and how each is valued.

the psych report

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Developing a Thesis Statement

Many papers you write require developing a thesis statement. In this section you’ll learn what a thesis statement is and how to write one.

Keep in mind that not all papers require thesis statements . If in doubt, please consult your instructor for assistance.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement . . .

Makes an argumentative assertion about a topic; it states the conclusions that you have reached about your topic.
Makes a promise to the reader about the scope, purpose, and direction of your paper.
Is focused and specific enough to be “proven” within the boundaries of your paper.
Is generally located near the end of the introduction ; sometimes, in a long paper, the thesis will be expressed in several sentences or in an entire paragraph.
Identifies the relationships between the pieces of evidence that you are using to support your argument.

Not all papers require thesis statements! Ask your instructor if you’re in doubt whether you need one.

Identify a topic

Your topic is the subject about which you will write. Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic; or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper.

Consider what your assignment asks you to do

Inform yourself about your topic, focus on one aspect of your topic, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts, generate a topic from an assignment.

Below are some possible topics based on sample assignments.

Sample assignment 1

Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II.

Identified topic

Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis

This topic avoids generalities such as “Spain” and “World War II,” addressing instead on Franco’s role (a specific aspect of “Spain”) and the diplomatic relations between the Allies and Axis (a specific aspect of World War II).

Sample assignment 2

Analyze one of Homer’s epic similes in the Iliad.

The relationship between the portrayal of warfare and the epic simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64.

This topic focuses on a single simile and relates it to a single aspect of the Iliad ( warfare being a major theme in that work).

Developing a Thesis Statement–Additional information

Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic, or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper. You’ll want to read your assignment carefully, looking for key terms that you can use to focus your topic.

Sample assignment: Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II Key terms: analyze, Spain’s neutrality, World War II

After you’ve identified the key words in your topic, the next step is to read about them in several sources, or generate as much information as possible through an analysis of your topic. Obviously, the more material or knowledge you have, the more possibilities will be available for a strong argument. For the sample assignment above, you’ll want to look at books and articles on World War II in general, and Spain’s neutrality in particular.

As you consider your options, you must decide to focus on one aspect of your topic. This means that you cannot include everything you’ve learned about your topic, nor should you go off in several directions. If you end up covering too many different aspects of a topic, your paper will sprawl and be unconvincing in its argument, and it most likely will not fulfull the assignment requirements.

For the sample assignment above, both Spain’s neutrality and World War II are topics far too broad to explore in a paper. You may instead decide to focus on Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis , which narrows down what aspects of Spain’s neutrality and World War II you want to discuss, as well as establishes a specific link between those two aspects.

Before you go too far, however, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts. Try to avoid topics that already have too much written about them (i.e., “eating disorders and body image among adolescent women”) or that simply are not important (i.e. “why I like ice cream”). These topics may lead to a thesis that is either dry fact or a weird claim that cannot be supported. A good thesis falls somewhere between the two extremes. To arrive at this point, ask yourself what is new, interesting, contestable, or controversial about your topic.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times . Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Derive a main point from topic

Once you have a topic, you will have to decide what the main point of your paper will be. This point, the “controlling idea,” becomes the core of your argument (thesis statement) and it is the unifying idea to which you will relate all your sub-theses. You can then turn this “controlling idea” into a purpose statement about what you intend to do in your paper.

Look for patterns in your evidence

Compose a purpose statement.

Consult the examples below for suggestions on how to look for patterns in your evidence and construct a purpose statement.

Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis
Franco turned to the Allies when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from the Axis

Possible conclusion:

Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: Franco’s desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power.

Purpose statement

This paper will analyze Franco’s diplomacy during World War II to see how it contributed to Spain’s neutrality.

The simile compares Simoisius to a tree, which is a peaceful, natural image.
The tree in the simile is chopped down to make wheels for a chariot, which is an object used in warfare.

At first, the simile seems to take the reader away from the world of warfare, but we end up back in that world by the end.

This paper will analyze the way the simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64 moves in and out of the world of warfare.

Derive purpose statement from topic

To find out what your “controlling idea” is, you have to examine and evaluate your evidence . As you consider your evidence, you may notice patterns emerging, data repeated in more than one source, or facts that favor one view more than another. These patterns or data may then lead you to some conclusions about your topic and suggest that you can successfully argue for one idea better than another.

For instance, you might find out that Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis, but when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from them, he turned to the Allies. As you read more about Franco’s decisions, you may conclude that Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: his desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power. Based on this conclusion, you can then write a trial thesis statement to help you decide what material belongs in your paper.

Sometimes you won’t be able to find a focus or identify your “spin” or specific argument immediately. Like some writers, you might begin with a purpose statement just to get yourself going. A purpose statement is one or more sentences that announce your topic and indicate the structure of the paper but do not state the conclusions you have drawn . Thus, you might begin with something like this:

This paper will look at modern language to see if it reflects male dominance or female oppression.
I plan to analyze anger and derision in offensive language to see if they represent a challenge of society’s authority.

At some point, you can turn a purpose statement into a thesis statement. As you think and write about your topic, you can restrict, clarify, and refine your argument, crafting your thesis statement to reflect your thinking.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Compose a draft thesis statement

If you are writing a paper that will have an argumentative thesis and are having trouble getting started, the techniques in the table below may help you develop a temporary or “working” thesis statement.

Begin with a purpose statement that you will later turn into a thesis statement.

Assignment: Discuss the history of the Reform Party and explain its influence on the 1990 presidential and Congressional election.

Purpose Statement: This paper briefly sketches the history of the grassroots, conservative, Perot-led Reform Party and analyzes how it influenced the economic and social ideologies of the two mainstream parties.

Question-to-Assertion

If your assignment asks a specific question(s), turn the question(s) into an assertion and give reasons why it is true or reasons for your opinion.

Assignment : What do Aylmer and Rappaccini have to be proud of? Why aren’t they satisfied with these things? How does pride, as demonstrated in “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” lead to unexpected problems?

Beginning thesis statement: Alymer and Rappaccinni are proud of their great knowledge; however, they are also very greedy and are driven to use their knowledge to alter some aspect of nature as a test of their ability. Evil results when they try to “play God.”

Write a sentence that summarizes the main idea of the essay you plan to write.

Main idea: The reason some toys succeed in the market is that they appeal to the consumers’ sense of the ridiculous and their basic desire to laugh at themselves.

Make a list of the ideas that you want to include; consider the ideas and try to group them.

nature = peaceful
war matériel = violent (competes with 1?)
need for time and space to mourn the dead
war is inescapable (competes with 3?)

Use a formula to arrive at a working thesis statement (you will revise this later).

although most readers of _______ have argued that _______, closer examination shows that _______.
_______ uses _______ and _____ to prove that ________.
phenomenon x is a result of the combination of __________, __________, and _________.

What to keep in mind as you draft an initial thesis statement

Beginning statements obtained through the methods illustrated above can serve as a framework for planning or drafting your paper, but remember they’re not yet the specific, argumentative thesis you want for the final version of your paper. In fact, in its first stages, a thesis statement usually is ill-formed or rough and serves only as a planning tool.

As you write, you may discover evidence that does not fit your temporary or “working” thesis. Or you may reach deeper insights about your topic as you do more research, and you will find that your thesis statement has to be more complicated to match the evidence that you want to use.

You must be willing to reject or omit some evidence in order to keep your paper cohesive and your reader focused. Or you may have to revise your thesis to match the evidence and insights that you want to discuss. Read your draft carefully, noting the conclusions you have drawn and the major ideas which support or prove those conclusions. These will be the elements of your final thesis statement.

Sometimes you will not be able to identify these elements in your early drafts, but as you consider how your argument is developing and how your evidence supports your main idea, ask yourself, “ What is the main point that I want to prove/discuss? ” and “ How will I convince the reader that this is true? ” When you can answer these questions, then you can begin to refine the thesis statement.

Refine and polish the thesis statement

To get to your final thesis, you’ll need to refine your draft thesis so that it’s specific and arguable.

Ask if your draft thesis addresses the assignment
Question each part of your draft thesis
Clarify vague phrases and assertions
Investigate alternatives to your draft thesis

Consult the example below for suggestions on how to refine your draft thesis statement.

Sample Assignment

Choose an activity and define it as a symbol of American culture. Your essay should cause the reader to think critically about the society which produces and enjoys that activity.

Ask The phenomenon of drive-in facilities is an interesting symbol of american culture, and these facilities demonstrate significant characteristics of our society.This statement does not fulfill the assignment because it does not require the reader to think critically about society.

Drive-ins are an interesting symbol of American culture because they represent Americans’ significant creativity and business ingenuity.

Among the types of drive-in facilities familiar during the twentieth century, drive-in movie theaters best represent American creativity, not merely because they were the forerunner of later drive-ins and drive-throughs, but because of their impact on our culture: they changed our relationship to the automobile, changed the way people experienced movies, and changed movie-going into a family activity.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast-food establishments, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize America’s economic ingenuity, they also have affected our personal standards.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast- food restaurants, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize (1) Americans’ business ingenuity, they also have contributed (2) to an increasing homogenization of our culture, (3) a willingness to depersonalize relationships with others, and (4) a tendency to sacrifice quality for convenience.

This statement is now specific and fulfills all parts of the assignment. This version, like any good thesis, is not self-evident; its points, 1-4, will have to be proven with evidence in the body of the paper. The numbers in this statement indicate the order in which the points will be presented. Depending on the length of the paper, there could be one paragraph for each numbered item or there could be blocks of paragraph for even pages for each one.

Complete the final thesis statement

The bottom line.

As you move through the process of crafting a thesis, you’ll need to remember four things:

Context matters! Think about your course materials and lectures. Try to relate your thesis to the ideas your instructor is discussing.
As you go through the process described in this section, always keep your assignment in mind . You will be more successful when your thesis (and paper) responds to the assignment than if it argues a semi-related idea.
Your thesis statement should be precise, focused, and contestable ; it should predict the sub-theses or blocks of information that you will use to prove your argument.
Make sure that you keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Change your thesis as your paper evolves, because you do not want your thesis to promise more than your paper actually delivers.

In the beginning, the thesis statement was a tool to help you sharpen your focus, limit material and establish the paper’s purpose. When your paper is finished, however, the thesis statement becomes a tool for your reader. It tells the reader what you have learned about your topic and what evidence led you to your conclusion. It keeps the reader on track–well able to understand and appreciate your argument.

Writing Process and Structure

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Getting Started with Your Paper

Interpreting Writing Assignments from Your Courses

Generating Ideas for

Creating an Argument

Thesis vs. Purpose Statements

Architecture of Arguments

Working with Sources

Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources

Using Literary Quotations

Citing Sources in Your Paper

Drafting Your Paper

Generating Ideas for Your Paper

Introductions

Paragraphing

Developing Strategic Transitions

Conclusions

Revising Your Paper

Peer Reviews

Reverse Outlines

Revising an Argumentative Paper

Revision Strategies for Longer Projects

Finishing Your Paper

Twelve Common Errors: An Editing Checklist

How to Proofread your Paper

Writing Collaboratively

Collaborative and Group Writing

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Rethinking Work

Key information, module code:, credit value:, module description.

Work is pervasive in the way we organise our lives, make sense of who we are, and order our societies. Many of us define ourselves by the work we do, and judge others by their success or failure in the workplace. This module unravels many of our unquestioned assumptions around the world of work. It examines work as a domain of human activity, a site of meaning-making, a source of identity, a form of dispossession, and a mechanism for social and economic differentiation. We will use theoretical perspectives from sociology, anthropology, political economy, ecological economics and feminist thought to explore debates around the role of work in human cultures and societies, as well as work as a site of exploitation, class-formation, inequality and resistance. To do so, we will study the way the meaning and nature of work vary across history and around the world, along with alternative visions of the way people can create livelihoods and social identity. We will look at case studies of work and working spanning hunter-gatherer societies in Namibia, carers in the UK, waste-pickers in Rio de Janeiro, robots in China and investment bankers in New York City. By drawing on a diversity of disciplinary perspectives and examples from both the global North and South, we will understand work as a shifting social process, cultural form, and economic phenomenon.

Assessment details

150-200 words x 10 class reading blogs (20% of the final mark)
2,500 word final research essay (80% of the final mark)

Educational aims & objectives

This module, which forms part of the BA Social Sciences, aims to expose students to core social science perspectives around the concept of work. Its main aim is to 'provincialize' or 'make-strange' everyday assumptions around labour, time-use, income and meritocracy. The module will focus not only on formal wage labour, but also unrecognized, informal and un-renumerated work. Students in the module will conceptualise the relationship between work, production, economic security, distributory justice, and social recognition, and will use perspectives from sociology, anthropology, ecology, gender studies and political economy to critically interrogate links between labour, work ethic, value, exploitation, and gender and racial justice. The module will situate the core concepts of the course within diverse geo-political, historical, economic and cultural contexts by linking each week's theoretical focus with an empirically rich academic case study of work or working. These case studies will be drawn from across history and geography, and range from modern-day slavery to robots, from hunter-gathering in Namibia to waste-picking in Brazil, from care in the UK to banking in Manhattan. Students will thus learn to interrogate the relationship between theory-making and empirics, and to both formulate and critically assess theoretical contributions based on empirical materials, including their own everyday lived experience.

The module will enable students to:

Explore the relationship between wages, labour, exploitation and production, including through the lens of class, gender and race.
Understand the role of work in social, community and political life, meaning-making and identity-formation across a variety of contexts and cultures.
Interrogate the social recognition, renumeration and value of 'non-standard' work, including informal, affective and care work.
Question the relationship between the work ethic, meritocracy, inequality and over-production.
Evaluate the role of workplace resistance and worker's movements in shaping working conditions and norms.
Situate debates around work in broader political-economic, philosophical and ecological debates around markets, production and distribution.

Learning outcomes

The module will be delivered in the university setting via a combination of lectures and seminars. While the lectures will be focused on key theories and concepts, the seminars will ground the lectures through student-led discussions of empirically rich real-world case studies of work and working from around the world.

Knowledge and understanding

At the end of this module students will be able to demonstrate a detailed and in-depth understanding of:

Key theoretical underpinnings of work as an economic, political, social and cultural institution, and the relevance of these theories to conceptual and policy debates around labour, welfare and distributory justice.
Key distinctions and overlaps between wage labour and others forms of productive, socially necessary or meaningful activities, including informal, immaterial, affective and care work.
Key academic and policy debates around the ‘goods’ of work, including social embeddedness, recognition, meaning making and economic security, and the ‘bads’ of work, including inequality, alienation, domination and exploitation.

Cognitive skills

Students who successfully complete this module will be able to:

Draw on empirical case studies from around the world to both inductively and deductively evaluate key conceptual and theoretical approaches to work and wage labour. *
Think across key scholarly and policy debates, including in interdisciplinary and intersectional ways. *
Critique and analyse variety of social scientific theories and concepts. *
Identify, reflect on and effectively communicate their own epistemological and ethical perspectives regarding key conceptual and policy debates around work, value and distributory justice.

Performance and practice

This module will enhance students’ ability to:

Synthesize academic and policy writing into succinct and accessible analysis. *
Communicate complex ideas clearly using visual, oral and written formats. *
Formulate an original argument and support this argument by drawing on empirical evidence. *
Critically analyse data and case studies relevant to understanding key theoretical perspectives on labour and work.

Personal, enabling and employability skills**

This module will develop students’ capacity to:

Engage effectively in oral and written dialogue, discussion and debate.
Defend and critique a variety of opposing and conflicting viewpoints.
Critically position themselves and their own plans and decisions in relation to the concepts and theories covered in the module, and reflect on how the material applies to their own views of work and working.

**In addition, many of the outcomes listed above are relevant to employability. See particularly those which are asterisked.

Subject areas

Social Science & Public Policy
Education, Communication & Society

Module description disclaimer

King’s College London reviews the modules offered on a regular basis to provide up-to-date, innovative and relevant programmes of study. Therefore, modules offered may change. We suggest you keep an eye on the course finder on our website for updates.

Please note that modules with a practical component will be capped due to educational requirements, which may mean that we cannot guarantee a place to all students who elect to study this module.

Please note that the module descriptions above are related to the current academic year and are subject to change.

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ENG 122 - Composition

Ask a librarian, selected readings.

For your critical analysis essay, you will choose one of the following readings, which are all available through the Shapiro Library. You can access these readings by clicking on the link provided, or through your Mindedge text in your course.

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Rethinking work: job crafting, self-determination, and employee well-being

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Sep 21, 2021

Rethinking the Thesis Statement

The thesis statement: the holy grail of the English classroom. I once had a professor tell my classmates and me to tape our thesis statements to the bottom of the computer screen to keep the essay cohesive, as a way of avoiding digression. But the main problem I see with student writing is the thesis statement. They think the thesis statement is the final and only thing their essay needs to say.

In their essays, many students will recycle the ideas in the thesis over and over again and get stuck bouncing around inside a thesis box of their own creation. They’ll even return to it in the conclusion and restate it, instead of writing something meaningful and relevant. The conclusion should be the moment when the reader walks away inspired and enlightened. They shouldn’t merely be reminded of what they already learned in the introduction.

When I teach the thesis statement, I try to focus on the fact that the thesis statement is just the beginning. A great essay should contain sentences that move in a logical progression from one idea to the next. It should develop in complexity, and not stay in one place. The reader should feel as if they are walking to a meaningful destination without any pauses or retreats. Or better yet, the thesis statement should feel like the lighting of a firecracker. When we read one, we should be excited about what comes next. It should give the writer the chance to elaborate, enhance, expand, and extend.

The primary function of the thesis is to answer a question. But to really answer a question, a writer must explore as many ideas related to that question or topic as possible. It goes way beyond one sentence. Simplifying our expectations for the thesis will hopefully eliminate any stress, fear, and worry. Putting too much emphasis on the thesis might lead our students to write a safe, but unexciting thesis statement.

Most students want to find the easy answer that they think their teacher will like, so we must ask a simple, yet challenging question that forces students to consider the topic in its entirety. By simple, I mean that all of the students in our class, regardless of their ability level, should get excited by the question. They should feel comfortable and excited about the question because they have plenty of evidence from class discussion and classwork to be confident and ready. By challenging, I mean the question should require the writer to think independently and do some mental work. The question should not be so complicated that it already contains part of the answer we’re looking for; it should allow for many types of answers.

We want to give our students the opportunity to tell us what they think is the most important thing about a novel, poem, story, or topic. The question and the thesis should not limit our students or confine them to one narrow view of the topic. It should open them up to many ideas, not just one.

Scott Cameron

English language arts teacher

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