Google Reward and Motivation: Literature Review

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Introduction

This paper will argue that for an organization to stand out, employee motivation is an imperative. Such argument will be supported in light of Google's case which will determine what strategies the company adapts to reward and motivate employees. The research shows that today, companies consider extremely important the motivation of workers when production is organized (Armstrong, Murlis, 1991, 25-36). We have seen that there is a relationship between productivity or performance of the worker and the work environment. Motivating employees is difficult, since each individual has their reasons for working and what motivates one person may not be important to others.

The case depicts the issue of employee motivation and how Google has been successful in retaining employees but also making people love working at Google. What impels here is to know about the reward and motivation is to know the philosophy and the strategy of Google to hire and retain the best brains all around the world and enabling them a conducive environment which is open to learning and creativity (Stroh, 2001, 9-11). The psychologists are interested in the behavior of employees to distinguish the external or extrinsic motivations as there are efforts to get better pay, reward and internal or intrinsic motivation as that is the satisfaction of having done a decent task, having managed a feat that leads to particular effort. Google does not neglect more than any other external motivations, it does not hesitate to pay high wages as reflected in the luxury cars that clog the parking lot, but it has a strong faith in the intrinsic motivation. In doing so, it follows famous examples, including that of Bill Gates who said early in his career: "No great programmer can sit at his table and say," I will make money "or" I'll sell hundreds of thousands. "Just because this kind of thinking does not help you solve problems."

Literature Themes

It is obvious that Google uses both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to reward employee, however the argument here is to decide which of the ways is most effective for the organization. The key arguments here are that some scholarly work believes that the extrinsic motivations are most effective in motivating employees, whereas another argument favors the intrinsic awards like satisfaction and love for the job.

Deci (1971) was the first to experimentally test the effects of reward on intrinsic motivation. He found a slightly negative effect on removal of a reward. Although these results were not very convincing, they were accepted as supporting the thesis that intrinsic motivation may decrease due to a strengthening program based on the reward. This study had at least the merit of providing an experimental model that has stimulated several other researches on the subject (Deci, 1971, 105-115).

In 1973, Lepper, Greene and Nesbitt confirmed the significantly negative effect of rewards on the repetition of a behavior and their study has often been cited in psychology textbooks. However, analysis of results raises doubts because there is a rather positive ...