UMUC Business Human Resources Discussion
https://www.studypool.com/uploads/questions/246104/20220703231157rewardinga.pdf
Click on the link below to read a classic management article. After reading the article, discuss how the premise of “rewarding A while hoping for B” still exists in today’s organizations. You may have examples from your own experience or know of some from recent news headlines. Remember, we are discussing bonus and incentive systems, not individual employee performance.
Student 1 (Yuno)The article was fascinating to explain how or why what seems like the primary goal of an organization or profession is displaced when the award system doesn’t incentivize the organization’s purpose. The most interesting to me and that I believe is relevant today is the section about politics. The article speaks about how a politician who is vague is more popular than one who explains goals in detail. Yet, voters with politicians would be more specific but they vote for those who are vaguer. I also believe that the example of education to be relevant.
Teachers being incentivized to conduct research or publish works instead of teaching. Meanwhile students value grades due to the gains of employment, scholarships, or parental praise and not because the grade level signals the knowledge. Therefore, it encourages students to cheat.When I was learning how the federal government works, my co-worker explained the federal budget system.
They said that each year Congress allocates budget for the federal agencies. If the Agencies don’t spend the money, it could be a justification for Congress to reduce the budget the following year. Therefore, the incentive at times becomes to spend the money, even if it doesn’t necessarily accomplish the mission. This is an example in my own experience where A (spending money) is rewarded, but the hope of B (accomplishing the mission) become the secondary point.
Student 2 (Brandon)Click on the link below to read a classic management article. After reading the article, discuss how the premise of “rewarding A while hoping for B” still exists in today’s organizations. You may have examples from your own experience or know of some from recent news headlines. Remember, we are discussing bonus and incentive systems, not individual employee performance.I found this article to very interesting.
I found the portion regarding medical practices to be very eye opening. If a doctor doesn’t diagnose a sickness in a patient, they risk embarrassment, guilt and even the possibility of a lawsuit, if the patient is in fact ill. However, if a doctor diagnoses a patient with an illness that isn’t truly ill, the risk is often rewarded with more money based on an increase of patients, and reduces the rick of embarrassment and potential lawsuit(s).
I found that with this being a common practice in medicine to be both interesting and a little bit scary as a patient.I can give an example from my experience in the military, where my organization placed a huge emphasis on always the attaining the very highest organizational quality assurance metrics. Scoring perfectly on all daily, weekly and monthly quality assurance metrics was always one of the top goals for the organization. However, having all of the aircraft mission ready (able to fly) dictated whether we worked during the weekend or not. So often times, individuals would do what ever it took to ensure the aircraft were mission ready going into the weekend so that we didn’t have to work over the weekend. Although there were always consequences for a quality assurance failure, it didn’t usually drive working through the weekend. So, the motivation was often timeliness (or quantity of work) over quality of work as a motivator.