A comment to Roxanne Abbas:
'Kohn quotes psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "to
deemphasize conventional rewards threatens the existing
power structure." What would cause a leader to give up the
power that a reward system such as merit pay
gives him/her?'
I haven't been following all of this thread closely so
apologies if this area has been overdone.
IMHO the leader in question does not willingly give up the
power that merit pay accords him/her (nor any other area of
power, for that matter) without either a struggle or a good
old fashioned crisis.
The struggle is usually between similar power holders and
ends with either division in the ranks or a division of one
of the power holders from the organisation. The good crisis
(a method I favour) makes it difficult if not impossible for
the holder of power to retain a benefit like merit pay
without embarrassment or ridicule. Sharply declining
performance in an area directly under that person's control,
for instance, or losing a major customer which this person
had a known reputation for retaining (without Charlie
keeping XYZ company sweet we'd lose the account).
However to back up to the original quotation and lob my two
cents at it; I'm not sure of the exact meaning of the word
deemphasize in this context, but if the intention is to
remove conventional reward mechanisms and leave a vacuum I
would agree. Or perhaps remove some reward systems and
leave others, which could distort behaviour toward those
activities that were rewarded.
Perhaps deemphasize means to decrease the value or prestige
of the reward in the eyes of the employee(s), which seems
like a more involved process. I think it then crosses into
the realm of culture change!
Thanks for listening,
Ryder
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>