Product Description
Diplomarbeit, die am 04.05.2001 erfolgreich an einer Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsakademie in Deutschland im Fachbereich Betriebswirtschaftslehre eingereicht wurde. Einleitung: Unternehmen befinden sich heute in einem starken Veränderungsprozeß. Die Wettbewerbssituation des Industriezeitalters wandelt sich in die des Informationszeitalters. Durch die wachsende Sättigung der Märkte entstehen grundlegende Veränderungen der wirtschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen, die man allgemein als den Wechsel von der angebotsorientierten zur nachfrageorientierten Marktwirtschaft beschreiben kann. Erinnert man sich an das Zitat von Henry Ford: “They can have whatever color they want as long as it is black.” so trifft dieses heute weniger denn je zu, denn der Kunde steht in der nachfrageorientierten Marktwirtschaft im Mittelpunkt aller wirtschaftlichen Aktivitäten. Produkte und Dienstleistungen müssen auf ihn zugeschnitten sein. Hinzu kommen die zunehmende Globalisierung des wirtschaftlichen Handels und die immer kürzer werdenden Produktlebenszyklen. Im globalen Wettbewerb bestehen daher nur diejenigen Unternehmen, die in der Lage sind, auf die sich rasant ändernden Markt- und Nachfragebedingungen schnell, flexibel und mit überzeugender Qualität zu reagieren. Innovationen sind infolgedessen für die Unternehmen lebenswichtig und stellen den Garant für ihre Existenz dar. An dieser Stelle müssen insbesondere die Mitarbeiter, das Human Capital der Unternehmen, in Betracht gezogen werden. Es stellt sich jedoch die Frage, ob Mitarbeiter, die folgsam und streng nach Anweisung ihrer Vorgesetzten ihre Arbeit verrichten, pünktlich zur Arbeit erscheinen, gleichzeitig aber auch genauso pünktlich wieder gehen und Eigeninitiative samt Kreativität kaum in das Unternehmen einbringen, dem Unternehmen besonders hilfreich sind? Aber warum verhalten sich Mitarbeiter so? Wenn das Management mit veralteten konservativen Vorstellungen seinen Mitarbeitern gegenüber tritt und die Einstellung hat, daß …

Unterstützung der Nutzung des Human Capital durch Motivation und Führung

It’s a business! It’s just business! – The two most used expressions that justify the action of an employer.

For an employee the company is supposed to be a family, a place in which you feel good, this being the main motivation and not the money. How about we treat this as a business for both sides? It is always about money. If next to money comes a pleasant social interaction and higher purposes … is fine.

When you negotiate your salary, the employer will try to pay you the smallest amount possible. The funny part is that if you tell the interviewer that you are there for the money, they will put you at the end of the list. So you lie and the carousel starts: they will think they tricked you and expect performance, you will be unsatisfied and will do work in … the smallest amount possible.
Everybody loses.

It should be a fair trade. You give your time and your competencies and you ask in return what you need and not what is offered.

Remember: You are part of the negotiation process and not the subject of negotiation. Personal branding should become your favorite jacket. The more you know about yourself, the more conscious you become of your value on the labor market.

Everything that is said about organizational behavior must respect the fair trade principles.

• Transparency and accountability
• Payment of fair price
• Gender equity
• Decent work environment
• Trade relations

We are so used to having freedom of speech but we do not care about our freedom to act. No matter the country, although the employer asks more work and dedication from you every day … he loves you until you ask for a raise.

Long-term relationships are based on solidarity, trust and mutual respect. You as an employee are the customer that buys-in the need for profit of the company every day. The organization should buy in exchange your need: the need for money.

Jeff Monday has a very interesting way of describing intrinsic motivation.

You can find the transcript here.

Job design is in itself a convention. Starting with the Scientific Management of Frederick W. Taylor, the work of the employees (managers not included) was simplified to the smallest unit possible, mainly repetitive tasks.

The concern for motivation in the work environment has change the purpose of job design. Job satisfaction, performance, customer satisfaction, and quality of working life are the goals that must be accomplished through job design and the associated techniques: job enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation.

Job scope is defined as a combination of the number of different activities performed by an employee and the level of control that an employee has upon how to perform those activities.

A manager has a high scope job because he performs a large number of activities (see Management – art of controlling processes and outcomes) and has a broader or narrower decision-making power.

An employee will perform when he sees a strong connection between his performance and a reward.

A manager is required to evaluate the performance of his/her subordinates, usually on a yearly basis. Their recommendation is the basis for an extra payment – the merit pay.

Merit pay plans allow to differentiate the high performers from the rest and to reward for a non repetitive task. Most researchers agree that they are not really working.  The main issue could be that the employee’ performance is judged in a subjective manner by the manager.

The lack of effectiveness comes from:

• Low discrimination distance. When there is no accurate measuring system in place, a manager will have the tendency to equalize the merit pay. This will make high performers unhappy, and low performers confused.
• Merit pay is too small. Because the merit pay is calculated as percentage from the salary, it will go unnoticed, and the level of satisfaction will not act as a motivator.
• Pay level is secret. Merit pay is too. Most of the companies in this world impose a policy of secrecy over wages, benefits and bonuses. I am sure that there arguments in favor of this. But, companies are made of people. When people do not know something they assume or invent. You can be sure that everybody will think that the other is paid better! Job satisfaction and motivation will decrease exponentially. If merit pay is kept secret, none of the employees will know who performs better and how much is performance paid with.

The methods of evaluating performance are evolving all the time. I think that, by now, there are enough objective criteria even to evaluate “the impossible to evaluate in numbers” white-collar employees’ performance. Merit pay could work only if managers give up their royal right of granting rewards and punishment based only on their subjective reasoning.