Reframing Organizations
1. In Chapter 7 of Reframing Organizations, the authors discuss how to improve human resource management in organizations. One piece of advice they offer is “reward well.” They buttress this view by providing a quote from the successful CEO of Costco: “If you pay the best wages, you get the highest productivity …”
While it may seem self-evident that good pay yields good results, this view runs counter to what a number of significant thinkers believe. Click on the following links and read the short items they contain.
Abraham Maslow, developer of the hierarchy of needs concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs
Frederick Herzberg, author of The Motivation to Work and developer of the hygiene-motivator dichotomy. http://www.businessballs.com/herzberg.htm
Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards. Click on https://webs.zd-cms.com/cms/res/files/385/Punished-by-Rewards.pdf to download an excellent summary by Robert T Whipple of Alfie Kohn’s book, Punished by Rewards. Read the entire summary (only six pages long), but focus your attention to Kohn’s seven principles, which are summarized on pp 2-4.
a. Common sense suggests that pay is a good motivator. The logic is: “You get what you pay for.”
i. Provide examples of three different career tracks where people clearly are not focused on earning high pay.
ii. For each of your examples, describe what the key motivators
b. Which of Maslow’s “needs” in his hierarchy of needs are most closely associated with the idea that “Pay is a good motivator”? which “needs” do not support this contention. Explain your answer.
c. Herzberg’s two-factor theory distinguishes between hygiene-factors and true motivators. Does the statement that ‘Pay is a good motivator” support the hygiene perspective or true motivator perspective. Explain your answer.
d. In his well-known book, Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn makes it clear that tying rewards (including pay) to performance often does not lead to desired behaviors.
i. Why does he believe this? Provide specific examples.
ii. Kohn does not reject the view that rewards (including pay) can yield improved performance under certain circumstances? According to Kohn, when can rewards yield desired behavior? What’s the problem with this
