Punished by Rewards LO14507

Richard C. Holloway (learnshops@thresholds.com)
Sun, 27 Jul 1997 22:36:36 -0700

Replying to LO14482 --

Roxanne Abbas wrote:

> Kohn maintains that the practice of using rewards is *at it's core,
> neither more nor less than a way of trying to control people.*
>
> Today's newspaper carries an Associated Press story of a study conducted
> by Professor Michael Marmot of the International Center for Health and
> Society at University College, London,on the risk of heart disease among
> British civil servants.

--snip---

> So perhaps Kohn was understating the issue with his book title, PUNISHED
> by Rewards. It could have been MURDERED by rewards. Gives new meaning to
> the term *Capital Punishment*. As a compensation consultant who has spend
> the past 20 years designing reward systems, the news on this correlation
> is a bit discomforting.

Roxanne, I can empathize with your feelings. I am frequently discomforted
by the continuing efforts among many HR/OD professionals to look for new
ways to manipulate and control "resources" with new reward and incentive
systems. At each step, they raise the ante for making it harder to
identify the real sources of human need--decent, stable income and the
realization of human dignity and self-worth.

-- 
Richard C. "Doc" Holloway
Thresholds--Human Development and Networking for Learning Organizations
Visit my website at <http://www.thresholds.com/>
Please note my new e-mail address--<mailto:learnshops@thresholds.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>