A different operating procedure
When Katherine Kellogg did her dissertation research, she was wearing scrubs and making rounds with surgeons. That is not the normal operating procedure for a prospective PhD in management, but then Kellogg was not pursuing a normal project. She was studying, from the inside, a heated controversy in medicine: the debate over reducing the time medical residents spend on the job from 120 hours per week to 80 hours per week. Proponents of shorter hours claimed the change would prevent mistakes; opponents felt it would lead to training that was insufficiently rigorous. There was just one problem with Kellogg’s research project: She herself had small children at the time, and naturally found that maintaining some semblance of a resident’s demanding schedule was, well, demanding. “When your research method is to live the life of the people you’re studying, maybe that wasn’t the smartest group to pick with young children,” Kellogg...