Reward System and Human Behavior

Discussion: Rewards and Behavior

This paper will focus on reward systems in the work place. In the chapter “On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B” by Steven Kerr (Staw), Mr. Kerr is stating that many rewards system in existence are faulty since they tend to reward the wrong behavior. In other words the desired behavior is not rewarded at all; instead the reward promotes an undesired behavior. I started thinking how I personally feel about rewards and my personal experiences with them. I can start with the weekly gold star in Elementary school that I and all the other students in my class could receive for good behavior from our teacher. For me it was a given to get one every week, because I was very quiet and shy student and was therefore considered as exemplary. So the gold star reward did not mean that much to me, until I was tardy a few mornings in a row. I had been tasked with walking a younger student to school every morning and this kid had a hard time getting up on time in the mornings. That week I did not get the gold star and I was mortified. Actually, I felt punished, so instead I felt very obstinate. Since I had not really cared about the reward system before, now I did not want anything to do with it at all. The whole idea of the gold star reward became such a turnoff and it did not motivate me to behave any better, actually the opposite was true.

During my time in the workforce I have worked in small and large companies and in local government. My experience is that the perceptions of rewards and the systems for rewards and recognition are vastly different in these different types of organizations. In the small companies rewards where more on the team level and personally handled by our managers, it could be in the form of a dinner gift card for an individual or that the team was taken out for a meal and a drink after work. Of course, not everyone wanted or could attend these team events, but all of us appreciated the team and individual...