After the first phase ran into trouble when most had learned the maximum
rewardable grades (about 5 years in), there followed a period of "low
morale, low productivty and conflict". Then someone sent to solve the
problems instituted "pay for performance" in a gainsharing manner.
Productivity and other measures increased along with the average pay
scales for some time. And then we found people again trapped by high pay
into a system without sufficient intrinsic reward or possibility. The
very latest on the grapevine is of decreasing productivity and
satisfaction and union warnings of higher pay and/or less cooperation.
This shouldn't come as a suprise to many in this conversation. Surely
we've discovered that "pay for xxxxx" isn't going to motivate people for
long. I suggest that motivation and organisational learning are mutually
incompatible phrases.
"Motivation" is one of those metanarratives of management that keeps in
place the reductionist psychology that is thwarting every good programme
known to OD and related fields. TQM and learning programmes continually
flounder as they rely on the thinking of reductionist psychology without
knowing it let alone challenging it.
For those who want to rise to the defense of motivation, consider the
following:
- What is the place of motivation in plant life, systems of plant
life (such as a rainforest) or intentional development of plant
life such as farming or gardening? Try motivating your plants to
grow.
- What is the place of motivation in animal life and systems of
animal life (such as herds, colonies or whole ecosystems)? Try
motivating a _wild_ animal. (I don't want to upset pet lovers.)
- Why does motivation become useful, or even possible, just because
we have introduced language or self consciousness?
To anticipate a certain category of response that defends motivation, I
point you to a sort of postmodern deconstruction that explores the
assumptions you are first making before you discover "motivation" in
something. That is, consider that you are bringing an _already_
interpretive structure that contains "motivation" as the heading of one of
its filters. That you are seeing motivation because of the lense that you
are looking through rather than because it's there.
This idea of _already_ filter applies to many things (everything?) and is
not being put down. The important point is to be aware of the filters so
that can be judged for their usefulness, questioned, challenged and do not
become what is true, necessary or - worst of all - "right".
Motivation is frequently asserted to be central to learning. But if we
are dealing with entities or organisms that are emergent complex adaptive
systems, they have a nature to learn in the same way that plants have a
nature to grow in the ways that they do. The environment will be a large
determinant in the ways that they grow. Same for us. We do seem to have
an additional advantage in that we can influence our (linguitic) design in
ways that plants can't and thus create more capacity for learning by the
iterative, interactive combination of environment and what is brought to
that environment.
However, in a rigorous look at the area, I think you can see "motivation"
as merely an explanatory principle (one that serves merely to mark where we
have stopped looking more deeply). These terms of reductionist psychology
which have us posit a mental cause for a result (action, other mental
state, or physical result) are unnecessary and contrary to the nature of a
complex adaptive system.
Motivation is one of the metanarratives that I want to put in its place,
if not completely destroy its usefulness for learning organisation purpose
and for organisational and management theory purposes. (There are other
ways to consider pay systems that are not dependent on motivational or
other manipulative factors.) I suggest that we won't get to satisfactory
theories for organisation or management until we have handled the whole
set of reductionist psychological theories that are imbedded in our society.
--
Mike McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>
"Postmodern society is the society of computers, information, scientific
knowledge, advanced technology, and rapid change due to new advances in
science and technology." Postmodern Theory, Best & Kellner