Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop.

Roy, D. 1952. Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop. American Journal of Sociology 67(2): 427-42.

1) What are the main aims of the article? In your own words, provide a 250-word summary of the key arguments in the paper.

The main aims of this article are about the relationship between pay and performance in a factory or a firm and the operators responded to poor payment system by reducing their work effort. In Roy’s research showed that the production behaviour of the machine operators to be powerfully influences by the payment system of the company. The operators were paid on production piece per hour varied from $0.09 to $1.66, a range of $1.57. The collected data showed that approximate one half of the hours earning fell between $1.15-$1.34 interval and the second largest fraction between $0.34-$0.54 interval. Amongst the workers, the jobs classified as two categories: ‘gravy’ and ‘stinker’ jobs. The earnings were too low for ‘stinker’ jobs that the workers will use minimal effort (‘goldbricking’) and earned $0.85 basic rate. In contrast, ‘gravy’ jobs were much better pay but operators would not exceed the quota of $1.3 per hour so the Method Department would not adjusted the price of the job to a lower level or make the job harder.

Roy argued in this article that machine operators were alerted to their economic interests rather than what Mayo researchers discovered from the bank wiring experiment in 1932 that the group productivity was affected from the social force of the peer groups but not the payment incentives.

2) What are the main theoretical findings of the article?

The theoretical finding of this article is the payment system of a company has a direct impact on the performance of the workers.

3) What are the main empirical findings of the article?

Over eleven months working as a radial-drill operator, Roy observed his fellow workers and collected data of his own quota restriction for a six month period. In the example...