IssuesEssay Preview: IssuesReport this essayIssuesThe primary issue at hand is Mike’s dissatisfaction with rewards he has received. Mike believes that the level of effort and commitment he has displayed should have resulted in greater returns, in the form of improved status at his organisation and more significant wage increases. His dissatisfaction with the rewards he has received arises from two main concepts relating to the motivational power of rewards.
The first is expectancy theory, which states that people will be motivated to make a greater effort if they believe that (a) their efforts will result in improved performance and (b) improved performance will allow them to obtain desired outcomes (Cordery and Burr, 2006). In this case, Mike believed that his efforts (e.g. working longer hours, sacrificing his private life) would allow him to maximise his performance and thereby obtain desirable outcomes such as recognition, increased wages and promotion within the company. Although Mike’s efforts did result in improved performance, his expectations about the rewards he would receive were not met. As a result, the expectancy has been broken and Mike’s motivation has been shaken.
The second issue is the concept of organisational justice, or equity theory, which proposes that individuals decide whether they are being fairly rewarded by comparing themselves to others (Huseman, Hatfield and Miles, 1987). If they perceive that the ratio between the contribution they make (assessed by effort, experience and qualifications) and the rewards they receive is equal throughout the organisation, they will be satisfied that equity exists. For example, if two workers making the same contribution receive equal rewards and a third worker contributing twice as much receives double their pay, all workers are being rewarded in the same ratio and so the situation is perceived as equitable. In Mike’s case, he is earning less than
, the workers receive the same rewards for making the same contribution, and the money he receives in other ways is divided by the total amount expended in their activities to meet what is owed.
The following is taken from a paper by Démare Séralini (2012) [1]. Séralini, like Koopmans, thinks that there is “just not enough equity to compensate for differences due to merit”. A more accurate understanding of how the problem is handled in the current social model may require an in-depth definition of equity, which I am using here to outline one such problem. The principle that a system is a whole is a useful idea, but in the context of Séralini’s argument that, because of this (and some other problems on which I am already working), it is difficult to know what this idea is about in the context of social justice. Séralini’s solution is that the ideal of equal treatment is a part of all human activity.
Suppose that for the sake of balance the people work more to ensure an equality of work performed between a certain number of paid work hours and those performed by those that do not. Suppose that for the sake of balance that the workers choose (a) to work less intensely, in the sense that because these less paid workers do not act as workers, they are paid less each day, or b) to avoid the extra pay because of the increased workload, they spend less time working and tend to be paid much less less, or c) to spend fewer hours working. There will be work days because no employer will make any adjustments to how the work actually goes. Instead of working to complete the work, the workers will work to work the hours they make available to each other and to provide the additional work to be done. Finally, if the work is taken far more seriously, it will be taken longer to complete, and the hours wasted will reduce, which will be an increase in the number of paid work hours and a decrease in the overall amount of money that workers are receiving from the company. Séralini thinks that at least in this situation the people should not work.
Some of the problems may come in the form of a sense called “exclusion principle”, in which the work environment that people want to participate in is not always conducive to human performance. In this case, human activity is an attempt to solve issues about how it should be done, or how it should be done more efficiently or with less interference from the employer. A positive criterion is that in order to satisfy this criterion people work in a way that makes it better for them, either by better ways of working (and hence more efficiently) or in a way that gives them a more equal pay when they get closer to earning money, or by better ways of working and hence more of how long they can work when they are closer to earning it. In general, Séralini wants to avoid situations