Those in practice believe that staff motivation is primarily about money. However, the motivation of people is a systemic issue, making the company have a future, making the system efficient and making the staff accomplished should be a trinity and interaction, and cannot be discussed and studied in isolation.
The role of grassroots management: making employees productive
People in practice believe that employees are motivated primarily by money. Today being a money-based society, people seem to believe this even more, even though money is not everything and nothing is possible without it.
Money is the general equivalent, which, like goods, is subject to the law of diminishing utility. If you have 100 and you want 1000, if you have 1000 and you want 10,000, there is no end to it and it will eventually threaten the cost of your business and the competitiveness of your products. Satisfaction in absolute terms will lead to dissatisfaction in relative terms. When the absolute quantity reaches a certain critical point, it is difficult to increase the level of satisfaction, no matter how much the quantity is increased. There seems to be an argument in economics that after a certain level of money has been given, his motivation declines instead. In the face of this, one can only say that the leverage of monetary incentives should be used with caution.
The question arises as to whether there are other ways of motivating employees. This is what is generally advocated in the theoretical world, and a theory of motivation has been developed.
The core concept is that of 'making people achieve'. This means that workers are motivated by growth and achievement in their work.
Today, practice is still practice and people in practice are still primarily motivated by money. Theory is still theory, and relying on achievement to motivate people is still more of a theoretical talking point. Theory has not yet been integrated with practice. It seems that the motivation of people is a systemic issue, so that the company has a future, so that the system is efficient and so that the employees have achievements, should be a trinity and interact with each other, and cannot be discussed and studied in isolation. Making employees successful is one part of the trinity.
According to Barnard, there are very few companies that have been around for 100 years. One of the underlying causes is social inertia, which means that as companies grow larger and more people are employed, the enthusiasm of employees generally declines. The cause of social inertia is a lack of incentives.
However, there have been companies in the world that have survived for 100 years. Have they really solved the problem of social inertia? Have they really solved the problem of insufficient incentives? If not, then how did they survive?
How does the saying go that it is impossible to satisfy human needs except in the spiritual world? Satisfaction is often transient, and satisfaction is followed by more confusion, anxiety and unease. It is possible that Barnard is misjudging on this issue.
According to Drucker, people can only be motivated to work from the work itself, not from various inducements outside the work. This is what many scholars later emphasised as internal motivation, motivating employees to achieve through the work itself.