The Importance of Pay in Employee Motivation:Discrepancies between What People Say and What They Do - Essay Example

 The Importance of Pay in Employee Motivation: Discrepancies between What People Say and What They Do Introduction The article written by Rynes, Gerhart and Minette focuses mainly on the behavioural aspects of the employees of any organization. The study that the article does tries to point out the discrepancies that lie between what the employees claim to be the factors that motivate them at work and the actual factor that drives the behaviour of the employees. According to the authors the managers and the employees tend to disregard the importance of salary though it is actually the most important factor for providing impetus to the performance of the employees. Discussion: Critique of the article In the first part of the article, the authors have tried to demonstrate their claim about the fact that there is a gap between what the employees claim and the reality. The authors have made a compilation from different articles and periodicals written by various authors on this topic. This has been done to make a comparative analysis of the ideas that the renowned authors seem to have. A review of the previous literature has been done where the two types of opinions have been presented. On one hand those authors have taken salary as the motivating factor for employees and have asked the people to rank its importance and on the other hand those who are dealing with real time studies have considered the other factors as well for estimating the factors of their motivation. The problem with this analysis is that the authors have taken only the cases where major studies have been taken. It may not reflect the reality. The authors could have increased the number of authors so that the analysis would provide more accurate results. The authors have mentioned about the cases where projective techniques have been used. This is used to understand what actually the person thinks other would do. This is an appropriate technique and the mention of this in the article have made the stand of the authors strong because the technique is more scientifically devised and has reflected what the authors actually wanted to establish. The second technique that the authors have mentioned about is the technique of policy capturing. In this technique also the importance of pay as an influencing character has come out (Porter 65). This again has strengthened the position of the authors. The authors have taken the studies which are to some extent biased towards the points that they have tried to establish. Only those cases that are supporting their research have been considered and the others have been ignored. The concept of social desirability of the employees has been mentioned by the authors in this section. The authors feel that the employees do not want to mention pay as their motivating factor because it is unacceptable to the society that money is the sole driver of the performances. This is true because although people work for money, they have a tendency to portray that they work mainly for intellectual satisfaction and for gaining prestige in the organisation. This particular aspect has also strengthened what the authors posit. An important aspect that the authors have ignored is that there may be two organisations that offer the same salary to a particular employee. In such a situation there might be others factors that actually help an employee decide which organisation to join for example the level of job satisfaction, his relationship with his peers or the learning opportunities. The authors have mentioned about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in the article. According to them if the basic needs that can be fulfilled by money are satisfied the higher needs like education, socialisation would also be fulfilled with the use of money. This may not be true. A person working in an organisation may not a jovial relationship with his peers though he may earn a lot of money. The person may not have a proper relation with his family members. In such cases the social needs would not be satisfied despite having enough money and that would get reflected in his job performance. The self actualisation needs of employees cannot be achieved with the help of money unless the intangible aspects of motivation and enthusiasm are incorporated into the job (Maslow 92). The people who work only for money rather than achieving excellence would never reach the self actualisation in reality. The authors have talked about money as being the reason for achieving social status among their community in the article. In a different section the author has said that people are reluctant to claim that they work for money. These two stands that the authors have taken at two different places are somewhat contradictory. In reality the status in a society is mostly determined by the education level and his personal and professional associations. Money is the result of that status. Hence it is the effect and not the cause of satisfactory performances of the employees in an organisation. Most of the employees, as the authors have mentioned want their salaries to be comparatively higher than their peers (Fishbein 79). Thus in this case the employees are using money only as a tool to create a difference between their peers. The main facet is that the difference in the position with the peers and creating a situation of envy is the factor that is driving the employees to perform well. In one part of the article the authors have mentioned about the contingency factors in which pay has been clubbed with another factor that resulted in a combined effect of the motivation of the employees. This is a very practical point of view and throwing light on this was wise on part of the authors. This has added weight to the article because often two or more motivating factors are responsible for an employee’s performance. Considering both material and immaterial incentives is necessary. The authors have also included those studies that have linked the personality types of the employees with the liking for monetary incentives. This was judicious to be a part of the study conducted by the authors because the preferences and tastes of the individuals vary with their personalities (Bradley 353). The study includes several recommendations that the authors have made to the employers about how to deal pay related problems. The companies have been advised to fix a pay scale that is in tune with the industry standards. This may not be feasible all the time because the companies decide the salary of the employees based on the human resources budget (Parker 91). It has been said that the best brain often seek a huge amount of salary from the employers. There are problems with this proposition because the best performers look for job satisfaction and not the salary structure while deciding on the job. The top executives of the companies do not depend on the salary very much. There are instances where they not accept anything more than a token money for their performance. In those cases, no proper correlation can be drawn between the performance of the lower level employees and the top executives (Baumeister 574). Instead of analysing the pay performances across the hierarchies, the authors should have considered each strategic levels of the organisation and conducted research on their object of motivation. The authors have made a suggestion to the organisation for regular monitoring of the behaviour and attitudes of the employees and then carry out the research. This survey over several years may not give the true result. In a particular organisation, in most cases there is a certain level of attrition. Hence the same set of employees would not be available for the research carried out over the period of time and hence there would be discrepancy in the outcome of such survey. The behavioural pattern would vary across the individuals. Therefore the performance measurement system suggested by the authors is flawed to some extent. Along with this, the suggestion that the behaviour of the best performers deserve special scrutiny is defective. A bias would arise in this case. It should have been noted by the authors that the total product of the company is the result of the performance of all employees taken together and not only the high performers (Mohr 112). Conclusion An immense drawback of the article is that the authors have picked up the literature of the authors who have done prior research on the issue and have analysed the work of those authors. Hence the research has been primarily a secondary research. If in their study, Rynes, Gerhart and Minette had conducted a primary research on a few employees themselves along with the literature review it would have given a stronger stand in their position. Completely relying on the works of other authors has weakened the argument that the authors presented. It has also made the study biased because they have chosen selective authors whose studies support their point and have ignored the others. However, it is true that money the marginal utility of salary is very high at the initial stages of employee motivation. Therefore speaking of the general public it is the sole motivator for performance. At the senior levels of the hierarchy in an organization however the softer aspects of the job have more significance to the employees. Works Cited Bradley, John H. and Frederic J. Hebert. The effect of personality type on team performance. Journal of Management Development. Vol. 16(5). 1997. Print. Maslow, Abraham. Motivation and personality. New York, NY: Harper. 1954. Print. Porter, Lyman W. and Edward E. Lawler. Managerial Attitudes and Performance. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc. 1968. Print. Baumeister, Roy F. and Kathleen D. Vohs. Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications. New York: Guilford Press. 2004. Print. Parker, Martin. Organizational Culture and Identity. London: Sage Publications. 2000. Print. Fishbein, Martin and Icek Ajzen. Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 1975. Print. Mohr, Lawrence B. Explaining Organizational Behavior. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. 1982. Print. Read More