PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

What people don't get about my job

Performance and pay suffer when clients don't understand what professionals do

2013-09-19
(Press-News.org) Having a job is a privilege that brings many things - satisfaction, pride, a roof over your head, a way of life. But what happens when not everyone understands what you do, affecting how they perceive you and how much they want to pay you? A new study co-written by a Boston College Carroll School of Management professor aims to address that very issue.

Titled "What Clients Don't Get about My Profession: A Model of Perceived Role-Based Image Discrepancies" (published in the Academy of Management Journal), the study looks at four specific professions that are high in demand but sometimes misunderstood.

"If people don't understand what you do, they tend to devalue what you do," says Michael Pratt, Professor of Management and Organization at Boston College and co-author of the study. "They don't understand why you're making all this money - 'Why should I pay you all this money?' is a common question these professionals keep hearing."

While this "image discrepancies" study focused on these four professions, researchers say it applies to many more.

"I assumed professionals would actually get over it, that there would be frustration, it would be an interpersonal problem, and that would be the extent of it," says Professor Pratt, also the O'Connor Family Professor at Boston College. "I didn't think it would have such a big impact on how they did their job, how it affected their pay and how they performed. I was surprised at the depth of how this affected job performance. It's not simply annoying – it has real impact."

Researchers looked at 85 professionals: 24 architects, 13 nurse practitioners, 17 litigation attorneys, and 31 certified public accountants (CPAs). In most cases, these professionals had to educate prospective clients on job responsibilities, while managing what researchers found were "impaired collaborations" along with "impracticable" and "skeptical" expectations.

"Architects are being told, 'All you do is draw lines, sketches, and pictures all day. What do you actually do?,'" says Professor Pratt about what prospective customers might say . "'You don't build anything. Why should I pay you all this money? If I am redesigning my house, why should I get an architect at all? Why don't I go to a general contractor and have him or her just build it? Tell him or her what I want and have them just build it for me.'

"Nurse practitioners can actually examine patients and prescribe medication but you'll get a patient in there saying, 'I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to a doctor.' They won't tell the nurse practitioner their problems; they won't let themselves be examined.

"We found with accountants, people don't give them the information they need to do their job. People don't understand what they do. Clients don't want to give them information because they think the purpose of that accountant being there is to find something wrong."

"And with lawyers, their clients will expect them to be dishonest and they expect to immediately be going to court and win. Several lawyers had clients who are mad at them, wondering 'Why aren't we going to court? Why aren't we getting a deal offered to us?' It's because they watch too many lawyer shows. "

All of which has a sobering effect not only on a client's desire to pay these professionals, but also on their level of satisfaction.

"In addition to the emotional costs, architects, for example, talk about fee erosion," says Pratt. "They're not making as much money anymore because they're competing against contractors which they don't think they should be doing because in their mind, they are providing a very different set of skills. Some professionals are being bypassed entirely. Nurse practitioners are being bypassed by people who want a doctor so they're not being used."

To counter image discrepancies, professionals find themselves utilizing a three pronged approach: educating a client on "what we do and how we do it"; demonstrating the skill; and relationship building, "getting to know personal details about people, your basic rapport building," says Pratt.

For certain professionals, defining yourself to clients may be just as important as the project itself.

"Even in situations in which it appears that clients do understand a profession," the study says, "it may be appropriate for a professional to manage clients' expectations to maintain initial trust, as gaining trust back after it has been lost may be even more difficult than gaining trust in the first place."

###

For more information, or to talk with Professor Pratt, please contact: Sean Hennessey, Office of News and Public Affairs, Boston College
(617) 552-3630 (office); sean.hennessey@bc.edu

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Earthworms can survive and recover after 3-week drought stress

2013-09-19
Earthworms are a welcomed sight in many gardens and yards since they can improve soil structure and mixing. But they are hard to find in the drier soils of eastern Colorado where water and organic matter is limited. Adding earthworms to fields where they are not currently found could help enhance the health and productivity of the soil. In areas where droughts are common, though, can earthworms survive? A new study suggests that they can. Earthworms use water for many things – for respiration, to keep their bodies from drying out, and to make the mucus that helps them ...

Extinction and overfishing threats can be predicted decades before population declines

2013-09-18
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) – A new UC Santa Barbara study shows that threats created by overfishing can be identified decades before the fish species at risk experience high overly harvest rates and subsequent population declines. Researchers developed an Eventual Threat Index (ETI) that quantifies the biological and socioeconomic conditions that eventually cause some fish species to be harvested at unsustainable rates. The findings are published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Overharvesting poses a significant threat to biodiversity, ...

Novel vaccine approach to human cytomegalovirus found effective

2013-09-18
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — An experimental vaccine against human cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, which endangers the developing fetus, organ transplant recipients, patients with HIV and others who have a weakened immune system, proved safe and more effective than previous vaccines developed to prevent infection by the ubiquitous virus. The first-of-its-kind approach to preventing human CMV infection, developed by a team of scientists at UC Davis and the University of Alabama, Birmingham, induced broader immunological protection in an animal model. The research study will ...

Stronger winds explain puzzling growth of sea ice in Antarctica

2013-09-18
Much attention is paid to melting sea ice in the Arctic. But less clear is the situation on the other side of the planet. Despite warmer air and oceans, there's more sea ice in Antarctica now than in the 1970s – a fact often pounced on by global warming skeptics. A University of Washington researcher says the reason may lie in the winds. A new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even in a warming climate. "The overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming," said ...

Are nanodiamond-encrusted teeth the future of dental implants?

2013-09-18
UCLA researchers have discovered that diamonds on a much, much smaller scale than those used in jewelry could be used to promote bone growth and the durability of dental implants. Nanodiamonds, which are created as byproducts of conventional mining and refining operations, are approximately four to five nanometers in diameter and are shaped like tiny soccer balls. Scientists from the UCLA School of Dentistry, the UCLA Department of Bioengineering and Northwestern University, along with collaborators at the NanoCarbon Research Institute in Japan, may have found a way ...

NASA spots wide band of strong thunderstorms south of Tropical Storm Usagi's center

2013-09-18
Infrared data provides a look at cloud top temperatures in tropical cyclones and there were very cold cloud tops in the thunderstorms banding around the south of newborn Tropical Storm Usagi's Center. On Sept. 16, low pressure System 99W strengthened into Tropical Depression 17W. The depression became Tropical Storm Usagi very late in the day. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Tropical Storm Usagi on Sept. 16 at 16:59 UTC/12:59 a.m. EDT. The image showed the highest storms and coldest cloud ...

Algorithm finds missing phytoplankton in Southern Ocean

2013-09-18
VIDEO: This video shows the concentration of phytoplankton observed by satellites in the Southern Ocean over the summer months. Click here for more information. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17: NASA satellites may have missed more than 50% of the phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean, making it far more difficult to estimate the carbon capture potential of this vast area of sea. But now, new research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Three improved satellite chlorophyll ...

Fluorescent compounds allow clinicians to visualize Alzheimer's disease as it progresses

2013-09-18
What if doctors could visualize all of the processes that take place in the brain during the development and progression of Alzheimer's disease? Such a window would provide a powerful aid for diagnosing the condition, monitoring the effectiveness of treatments, and testing new preventive and therapeutic agents. Now, researchers reporting in the September 18 issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron have developed a new class of imaging agents that enables them to visualize tau protein aggregates, a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and related neurodegenerative ...

Young stars cooking in the Prawn Nebula

2013-09-18
Located around 6000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion), the nebula formally known as IC 4628 is a huge region filled with gas and clumps of dark dust. These gas clouds are star-forming regions, producing brilliant hot young stars. In visible light, these stars appear as a blue-white colour, but they also emit intense radiation in other parts of the spectrum — most notably in the ultraviolet [1]. It is this ultraviolet light from the stars that causes the gas clouds to glow. This radiation strips electrons from hydrogen atoms, which ...

'Guns do not make a nation safer,' say doctors

2013-09-18
Philadelphia, PA, September 20, 2013 – A new study reports that countries with lower gun ownership are safer than those with higher gun ownership, debunking the widely quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer. Researchers evaluated the possible associations between gun ownership rates, mental illness, and the risk of firearm-related death by studying the data for 27 developed countries. Their findings are published in the current issue of The American Journal of Medicine. Gun ownership in the US has been a hotly debated issue for more than 200 years. A popular ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Older teens who start vaping post-high school risk rapid progress to frequent use

Corpse flowers are threatened by spotty recordkeeping

Riding the AI wave toward rapid, precise ocean simulations

Are lifetimes of big appliances really shrinking?

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

[Press-News.org] What people don't get about my job
Performance and pay suffer when clients don't understand what professionals do