Impact of Benefits on Employees Happiness

953 words | 4 page(s)

Osabiya, B. (2015). The effect of employees motivation on organizational performance. Journal Of Public Administration And Policy Research, 7(4), 62-75.

The author of the article, Osabiya Babatunde is a lecturer and coordinator of studies at the School of Management Sciences at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). In this article, the author speaks to students, consultants and employers. The author aims at empowering employers and educating future employers on the inherent benefits accrued from motivating workers. The personality and experience of the author and his contribution to research in management sciences create a strong appeal to ethos. In the article, Osabiya (2015) employs a persuasive tone, using words and phrases such as ‘apathy’, ‘feeling good’ and ‘childish’ which appeal to pathos in a powerful way.

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In the article, Osabiya surveys various previous work that involved the effect of the motivation of construction workers. Specifically, the author seeks to find the effect of the motivation on the performance of the workers and the productivity of the company. The author draws on various theories such as the Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory, content theories, Alderfer’s need modified theory, Herzberg’ Two Factor theory and the McGregor theory X and theory Y among others. The author also classifies motivation into three categories: Social relationship; economic motivation; and the intrinsic satisfaction. In the end, the author establishes that motivated employees have love and belongingness to their companies, are motivated to undertake challenging tasks at the workplace and had improved communication with their superiors.

The article maintains relevancy to the topic throughout. However, the study is less accurate in explaining the motivation outcomes on the workers themselves rather than the company gains. Use of too many theories with little practical outcomes does poorly in convincing a manager who does not believe in motivation as a way of increasing the employee productivity.

Brown, G., Gardner, J., Oswald, A., & Qian, J. (2008). Does Wage Rank Affect Employees’ Wellbeing?. Industrial Relations, 47(3), 355-389.

Gordon D.A Brown is a professor of psychology at the University of Warwick. Dr. Jonathan Gardner is a lands economist and undertakes research and development in risk management and insurance at the Watson Wyatt Worldwide. Andrew Oswald is a professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick. Jing Qian works for the ABC Research Group at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development. The article focuses contains management information that targets the employers and management students audience. These authors come from different academic backgrounds which weaken the appeals to ethos. However, the authors actively conduct a research using the available data hence strengthening the logos appeal.

The authors argue that wage increment and rank is not the primary cause of satisfaction and wellbeing to the employees. In a study which is both experimental and analytical, the authors show that satisfaction and wellbeing of employees is more inclined to the ordinal position. A full statistical analysis on 16,000 British employees is conducted in the study to wage differences and the well-being of employees at the workplace. The findings of the analysis show that employees are more concerned on how their income fairs against other remuneration levels in their workplaces. Therefore, according to the study, benefits in the form of wage increment does not motivate the worker, the comparison of such benefits against their fellow workers do. To support their findings, the study shows that labor turnover is related to the skewness of the distribution of pay in the workplace.

The study is significantly accurate and credible due to the use of factual data and the wide sample – consisting of 16,000 workers. The credibility of the study is however weakened by assuming other variables, as it concentrates on wage benefits only. The paper, however, puts considerable effort in convincing managers and employers who believe that employees are only motivated by wage increment.

Ariely, D., Bracha, A., & Meier, S. (2009). Doing Good or Doing Well? Image Motivation and Monetary Incentives in Behaving Prosocially. American Economic Review, 99(1), 544-555.

Dan Ariely is an academician at Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Anat Bracha and Stephan Meier work at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Stephan Meier is also a management scholar at IZA Institute of Labor Economics and Columbia Business School. The authors target an audience that is actively involved in the management process, especially in the human resources management. Though the authors do not deny the fact that monetary incentives have a behavioral benefit to a person, they argue that the monetary incentives may not be effective while done in public. Similar to the study by Brown, Gardner, Oswald, and Qian (2008), this study a factual experiment to realize the results which strengthen its logos appeals.

In the study, 161 Princeton graduates are sampled to conduct an experiment to determine how image motivation and monetary incentives impact a person. In a rather different approach from the other studies, this study weighs how the impact of motivation and monetary incentives cause workers to behave pro-socially. The researchers find that extrinsic incentives (public incentives) cause to concentrate more on self-improvement so as to appear as if they are doing well, which weakens their prosocial acts. On the other hand, private monetary incentives are found to cause more prosocial acts, since the factors that dilute prosocial acts are minimized. In regards to this study, it can be understood that while the authors believe that monetary incentives promote prosocial acts (an indicator of happiness), they may not have any effect when done in public.

The relevancy and accuracy of the article is weak since the authors seem to be in dilemma over the impacts of monetary incentives and image value. However, use of factual data to conduct the experiment and a sophisticated methodology improves the credibility of the study.

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