In a message dated 7/21/97 7:56:46 PM, Lee Holmer wrote:
>I read Kohn's main concern about extrinsic motivation to be that it
>EXTINGUISHES intrinsic motivation. E.g. if an employee enjoys making
>customers happy, then is put on a bonus system based on customer
>satisfaction ratings, that employee will be likely to lose interest in
>pleasing customers for its own sake. To me, this is the main reason why
>managers need to understand the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic
>motivation--so that they can avoid producing unintended consequences.
We've discussed a little about Czikzentmihaly's "Flow" on this list
before. One of Mihaly's main claims is that we need to have clear goals
(intrinsically movtivated) and good feedback systems to allow us to focus
our attention. I believe feedback measures (e.g., measuring customer
satisfaction) are not inherently detrimental to intrinsic motivation. In
fact, they are welcomed. What can happen is that some external people
(management? parents? authorities?) try to captilize on measuring the
intrinsic motivators to try to get other people to perform how they want
and end up turning intrinsic motivators into extrinsic punishers! My
experience of feedback (measures) is that they are very effective in
helping focus attention, producing relaxed concentration and accessing
very powerful states of performance and enjoyment. Raising awareness is
*amost* always a good thing! Hope this makes sense.
Margaret McIntyre
margmci@aol.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>