eased employee participation in the organization's efforts to attain its goals. To the extent that the joint efforts are successful (productivity improvements exceed an agreed upon base level), the benefits are shared between employees (both production employees and management) and owners.
A merit pay system represents a variation on the gain sharing concept. A merit pay system provides a link between performance and reward. Political scientists have a need to know about and understand the merit pay system concept because the governmental policies that they may be called upon to either develop or implement may affect or be affected by merit pay systems in the general economy, and because merit pay systems are frequently found in governmental and academic organizations wherein most political scientists are employed.
The 10 sources dealing with the merit pay concept are reviewed in this section. These annotated bibliographies provide brief summaries of the articles, contribution value assessments, and bibliographic data.
Ballou, Dale, & Michael Podgursky. (1993, October). Teachers' attitudes toward merit pay: Examining conventional wisdom. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 47(1), 50-61.
Conventional wisdom holds that school teachers generally are hostile to the merit pay system concept. The authors of this article examined the perceptions of teachers in both public and private schools toward the merit pay concept. Their findings challenged the conventional wisdom, as examination found that teachers are neither demoralized by nor hostile toward the merit pay concept. Even teachers of disadvantaged, low-achieving students, who because the tasks are quite difficult are presumed to oppose the merit pay concept, were found to be generally supportive of merit pay.
The contributive value of this research lies in the dispelling of the myth that merit pay is not widely supported by employees. As the findings in relati...