Q. Purpose of  Motivating personnel?

Compensation management aims at motivating personnel for higher productivity. Monetary compensation has its own limitations in motivating people for superior performance. Alfie Kohn has gone to the extent of arguing that corporate incentive plans not only fail to work as intended but also undermine the objectives they intend to achieve. He argues that this is due to the inadequate psychological assumptions on which reward systems are based. His conclusions are as follows:

a. Rewards punish people: their use confirms that someone else is in the control of the employee.

b. Rewards rupture relationships: they create competition where team work and collaboration are desired.

c. Rewards ignore reasons: they relieve the managers from the urgent need to explore why an employee is effective or ineffective.

d. Rewards discourage risk taking: employees tend to do exactly what is required to earn the reward, and not any more.

e. Rewards undermine interest: they distract both the manager and the employee from consideration of intrinsic motivation.

Not with standing these arguments, compensation management can be designed to motivate people through monetary compensation to some extent.