Why Incentive Plans Cant Work
This document contains three articles on the value of incentives. Please read all three.
Article 1
Title: Why incentive plans cannot work.
Source: Harvard Business Review, Sep/Oct93, Vol. 71 Issue 5, p54, 7p, 2 charts, 4c
Author(s): Kohn, Alfie
Subject(s): INCENTIVES in industry
EMPLOYEE motivation
Abstract: Discusses reasons for the failure of incentive programs. Use of rewards to institute and maintain reforms; Securing temporary compliance; Studies showing the ineffectivity of incentive plans to boost productivity; Lack of basis for money's worth as motivator; Rewards as manipulative in nature; Employee relationships as casualties of rewards.
AN: 9312031646 ISSN: 00178012
Note: This title is held locally.
Database: Business Source Premier
Section: In Questions
WHY INCENTIVE PLANS CANNOT WORK
When reward systems fail, don't blame the program -- look at the premise behind it.
It is difficult to overstate the extent to which most managers and the people who advise them believe in the redemptive power of rewards. Certainly, the vast majority of U.S. corporations use some sort of program intended to motivate employees by tying compensation to one index of performance or another. But more striking is the rarely examined belief that people will do a better job if they have been promised some sort of incentive. This assumption and the practices associated with it are pervasive, but a growing collection of evidence supports an opposing view.
According to numerous studies in laboratories, workplaces, classrooms, and other settings, rewards typically undermine the very processes they are intended to enhance. The findings suggest that the failure of any given incentive program is due less to a glitch in that program than to the inadequacy of the psychological assumptions that ground all such plans.
Temporary Compliance
Behaviorist theory, derived from work with laboratory animals, is indirectly responsible for such programs as piece-work
Article 1
Title: Why incentive plans cannot work.
Source: Harvard Business Review, Sep/Oct93, Vol. 71 Issue 5, p54, 7p, 2 charts, 4c
Author(s): Kohn, Alfie
Subject(s): INCENTIVES in industry
EMPLOYEE motivation
Abstract: Discusses reasons for the failure of incentive programs. Use of rewards to institute and maintain reforms; Securing temporary compliance; Studies showing the ineffectivity of incentive plans to boost productivity; Lack of basis for money's worth as motivator; Rewards as manipulative in nature; Employee relationships as casualties of rewards.
AN: 9312031646 ISSN: 00178012
Note: This title is held locally.
Database: Business Source Premier
Section: In Questions
WHY INCENTIVE PLANS CANNOT WORK
When reward systems fail, don't blame the program -- look at the premise behind it.
It is difficult to overstate the extent to which most managers and the people who advise them believe in the redemptive power of rewards. Certainly, the vast majority of U.S. corporations use some sort of program intended to motivate employees by tying compensation to one index of performance or another. But more striking is the rarely examined belief that people will do a better job if they have been promised some sort of incentive. This assumption and the practices associated with it are pervasive, but a growing collection of evidence supports an opposing view.
According to numerous studies in laboratories, workplaces, classrooms, and other settings, rewards typically undermine the very processes they are intended to enhance. The findings suggest that the failure of any given incentive program is due less to a glitch in that program than to the inadequacy of the psychological assumptions that ground all such plans.
Temporary Compliance
Behaviorist theory, derived from work with laboratory animals, is indirectly responsible for such programs as piece-work