In Yuval’s recent post, he explains how individuals in a workplace are motivated to do dishonest and unethical things, such as plagiarize or cheat, when faced with a stressful situation/time crunch. While reading this post, I couldn’t help but think back to this article in class 17 prep by Steven Kerr. In Kerr’s article, he describes the faults within a system that rewards a certain action regardless of the steps taken and effort put forward to complete said action, and suggests that successful businesses are the ones that truly reward the behaviour that they are looking for, rather than simply the end product.
The connections that can be made between the two pieces of writing are endless. In the companies that are described in Yuval’s post, there are obviously no rewards in place for honest, ethical behaviour, and instead only having work done by the deadline is rewarded. This seems to be contradictory in terms of overall business goals, as the reputation of any business that is known to reward those who plagiarize will surely be tarnished.
The best way to ensure that a company’s employees are doing honest, thoughtful work rather than copying it from some corner in the depths of the internet is to keep rewards in place for having work completed by the deadline, as that is still an important value of the company, but to also give some sort of reward to those who are using their own genuine ideas and knowledge. By rewarding these employees even just with a “hey, coffee’s on me today, keep up the good work,” they will be encouraged to continue putting forth their own work, and hopefully those workers who currently don’t will see a reason to begin doing so. And if not, then they should get the axe.