Organizational Behavior (Management 622).

1. Submitted to: Dr. Edwin B. R. Gbargaye
Organizational Behavior (Management 622).
August 28, 2013
By: Sophia W. Ajavon
Ambrose F. Bonney
Arthur K. Norris
Inducements and

2. Inducement and productivity are key components of a
modern organization, and they must be taken seriously as a way
of life for all managers in the workplace. Workers must be
induced (influenced) in order to get the best out of them for the
entity’s success. Getting people to do what you want them
to do is not an easy task. They may have other things on mind
that seem important to them, so making these people do as you
want is always challenging.
This is also an issue in the workplace, where there are
people from different backgrounds, exhibiting different
behaviors on and off the job and having their personal goals
conflicting with the organizational goals. The behaviors of these
people may impact productivity of the entity in positive and/or
negative way.
Introduction

3. At the heart of theoretical and empirical work on
helping behavior in organizations is the notion that
organizations often depend on such behaviors to deal
with non-routine aspects of work. Helping behavior is a
robust predictor of group and organizational
performance (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, &
Bachrach, 2000), and has become more important in
light of movement toward greater employee
involvement (e.g., Boxall & Macky, 2009), interactive
work structures (e.g., Frenkel & Sanders, 2007), and
human resource flexibility within organizations (e.g.,
Beltrán-Martín, Roca-Puig, Escrig-Tena, & Bou-Llusar,
2008) 1.

4. Elton Mayo and Mary Parker Follet who are
champions of this movement, spoke on these
issues as a means of providing managements
worldwide with positive advice on how to be
productive.
Furthermore, the issue of the firm was
also analyzed by the great American
Management Consultant Edward W. Deeming
(TQM-1980s -1990s) when he advised the firms
in Japan to compete on the basis of product
quality.

5. “Organization performance is enhanced
by designing products and services to meet or
exceed customers’ expectations and by
empowering workers to find and eliminate all
factors that undermine product /service
quality”. 2 The Human side of Enterprise
written by Douglas McGregor is another
important philosophical base for the modern
view of people in the workplace.

6. His optimistic view stated in his Theory Y
provided a way forward concerning the issues
of how to treat workers in an organization. He
stated that “managers can achieve much if they
view workers as self-energizing, committed,
responsible, and creative” 3.
Not forgetting Chester Barnard-Natural
Systems Theory (1930s-1940s)- who called for
management to maintain a cooperative system
by offering inducements and exercising moral
leadership. 4

7. HR Programs Can Be Divided into Two Major
Groups:
1. Inducements and investments include
training, pay level, benefits level, job security
and procedural justice.
2. Employer expectations include individual
pay for performance systems, employee
monitoring and formal performance
appraisals, with the goals of raising overall
performance levels. 5

8. Inducement from a denotative point means an
incentive, a bribe. 6 They are extra benefits or an
increase in present benefit such as pay rise that will
probably lead to increase in output.
In the workplace, employers always want to
have a high level of productivity increasing at an
increasing rate until its point of diminishing return,
thereby leading to a successful entity and a happy
CEO. But these CEOs who want to be happy know
that there are obstacles to such projected increase in
productivity, whether internal or external.
Concepts of Inducement

9. But a candid look by the writers took a picture
of productivity with respect to the internal factors
which may harm or help productivity. And the main
issue keen to hamper the process of productivity is
the individual and collective goal of the employees.
But researches along the way have proven that
there are ways to bring individual motives in line
with the motives of the firm.
Concepts of Productivity
Whether the entity is for profit making or not for
profit making, everyone wants to have a positive
result. Put simply, every institution is setup with the
sole intent of been successful in whatever they do.
This is an important goal not stated in the general
goals of the organization documents.

10. Simply put, productivity is efficiency in production: how
much output is obtained from a given set of inputs. As such, it is
typically expressed as an output–input ratio. Single-factor
productivity measures reflect units of output produced per unit
of a particular input. Labor productivity is the most common
measure of this type, though occasionally capital or even
materials productivity measures are used. Of course, single factor
productivity levels are affected by the intensity of use of the
excluded inputs. Two producers may have quite different labor
productivity levels even though they have the same production
technology if one happens to use capital much more intensively,
say because they face different factor prices. 7

11. Managers are conductors of an
input orchestra. They coordinate the
application of labor, capital, and
intermediate inputs. Just as a poor
conductor can lead to a cacophony rather
than a symphony, one might expect poor
management to lead to discordant
production operations

12. Bloom and Van Reenen document that higher-
quality management practices (and higher scores)
are correlated with several measures of
productivity and firm performance, including labor
productivity, TFP, return on capital, Tobin’s Q, sales
growth, and the probability of survival. 8 The
correlation between a firm’s management practice
score and its total factor productivity is statistically
strong and economically nontrivial.
Correlation Between Management
and Productivity

13. Inducement VS. Productivity: Are they Correlated?
Even though inducements are spoken of in
many different ways, there is a special way firms
look at the issue with respect to its impact on
productivity. By giving employees what is
required for them to work, that is to say just
benefits and extra incentives, managers may
assume that the employees will do even better in
getting the job done, which will lead to the firm
been productive.

14. Inducement VS. Productivity: Are they Correlated?
For many years behavioral theorists, or
theorists of organizational behavior have been
calling for employers to take a keen look at the
unavoidable impact that employees have on the
production of the firm. This is evident by the fact
that theorists of the Human Relation Movement
of the 1920s call for “managers to treat
employees with respect, replacing close
supervision with a more relaxed and sympathetic
form of supervision, encouraging employees to
express themselves freely, developing a cohesive
team work & cooperative behavior”.9

15. Results suggest that perceptions of supportive
human resources practices (participation in
decision making, fairness of rewards, and growth
opportunities) contribute to the development of
Perceived Organizational Support (POS), and POS
mediates their relationships with organizational
commitment and job satisfaction. 10

16. If a management is practicing inducement,
employees expect their management to provide
them incentives such as benefits, vacation,
salary, career progression, etc. And make these
things common to all employees.
The issue of inducement increasing
productivity is a serious consideration in the
Agency Theory – a theory that tries to explain
and find solution to conflict of interest that
may arise when the goal of an individual is in
conflict with (differ from) the goals of the
organization.

17. Some researchers have stated that
organizations that have a high focus on
inducement and are very clear and even
handed in how they award inducements
will have a lower overall employee exists.
A Human Resource Website, HRVoice.Org
states that “people will stay as they feel
well rewarded, and an increase in turnover
will come about from the voluntary exists
of low performing staff”. 11

18. This is an indication that inducements
and productivity are positively related;
meaning an entity is most likely to have
high output (ceteris Paribus), given the fact
that they are induced by better incentives
as compare to another situation where the
level of inducement is low.

19. one answer for how productivity improvements
come in line with inducements provided to
employees, comes from Sandra Robinson of the
University of British Columbia and Sarbina Deutsch-
Salamon of York University. In a recent research they
identified that “when employees feel they are trusted
by management, sales and customers service go up.
This simply means that when employees feel trusted by
their managers/supervisors they will perform at a higher
level, thus increasing the contributions of employees to the
overall performance of the organization.

20. Life is a journey and we are all
travelers. Life is a short trip
and those who realize that
harness their true potential

21. Life is a journey with problems to solve,
lessons to learn, but most of all,
experiences to enjoy

22. Footnotes
1. Human Resources and helping in Organization
aom.org/uploaded Files/Publications/AMR/2ARevision1AMR.
2 Gbargaye E.B.R. (2013), Lecture notes on Organizational Theory (2013)
University of Liberia
3 Gbargaye E.B.R. (2013), Lecture notes on Organizational Theory (2013)
University of Liberia
4 Barnard C. I. (1938) The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
5. How to Increase the Retention of Good Performers While Encouraging Poor
Performers to Leave the Organization http://www.bchrma.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/rb-performers.pdf
6 www.HRVoice.rog (Article: Clearer Expectations, Increased Productivity).
Accessed on July10, 2013 at 7:25am
7 Syverson,Chad (2011) What determines productivity? Journal of Economic
Literature 2011, 49:2, 326–365 http:www.aeaweb.org/
articles.php?doi=10.1257/jel.49.2.326 accessed 9.7.2013
8 Syverson,Chad (2011) What determines productivity? Journal of Economic
Literature 2011, 49:2, 326–365 http:www.aeaweb.org/
articles.php?doi=10.1257/jel.49.2.326 accessed 9.7.2013

23. Footnotes
9 Allen, Shore, Griffeth (2003) The Role of Perceived Organizational Support and
Supportive Human Resource Practices in the Turnover Process
Journal of Management http://jom/sagepub.com accessed Sept. 7, 2013
10 How to Increase the Retention of Good Performers While
Encouraging Poor Performers to Leave the Organization
http://www.bchrma.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/rb-performers.pdf
11 Cook I.J, One Key To Productivity(www.HRVoice.org) Accessed on July 10,2013
at 7:30am