Worker Motivation
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Many workers are unsettled by the restructuring, reductions and downsizing, salary cut-backs, and redistribution of work loads that so many private and public organizations are experiencing. Since 1900, management theory has evolved from a view of people as threats to the organization which need to be contained and their human inconsistencies restricted, to a view of people as assets. Twenty years ago, Peter Drucker warned managers that the inescapable fact was that the traditional way of managing people (Theory X or carrot and stick) would no longer work. This approach does not work for manual laborers in developed countries, and nowhere does it work for information and knowledge workers. Punishments such as fear and hunger are no longer available to the modern manager. Even low-paid workers no longer fear they will starve if they are fired. Fear, even when it can be evoked, has largely ceased to motivate workers. Fear has become a demotivator. The spread of education has made people more employable in developed countries such as the United States. In a highly organized society, people have greater knowledge of opportunities and greater possibilities of gaining access to new employment. The use of discipline to motivate workers to perform is an inadequate approach also. If misused, disciplinary action, like fear, can cause resentment and resistance by workers, demotivating them to a greater degree. Financial rewards became less and less of an incentive. T
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dy prompted Western Electric to conduct further research.
Elton Mayo reinterpreted the original data and hypotheses. An industrial researcher, Mayo introduced new research methods and assigned an associate to oversee the daily operations and coordination of the study. The most significant findings resulted from the relay assembly test room in which six women were isolated so that technicians could study the effect, if any, of certain variables on their productivity. After one year, interviews with the women revealed a completely different set of variables: the women felt important because they had been singled out from the rest of the workers; they expressed high regard for the type of supervision they received during the study; they spoke negatively of the treatment they usually received from their regular supervisors; they were able to discuss work-related issues freely with the test room supervisors; they received advance notice of changes in the work schedule; and they shared a team cohesiveness developed over the time spent together.
Mayo had not foreseen this impact of social and personal rewards which were perceived by the employees as a part of consideration by management. Productivity increased because of hum
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Approximate Word count = 3022
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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