The Importance of Pay in Employee Motivation, Discrepancies between What People Say and What They do

The Importance of Pay in Employee Motivation, Discrepancies between What People Say and What They do

Introduction

The article by authors Rynes, Gerhert and Minnet (2004), 'The Importance of Pay in Employee Motivation, Discrepancies between What People Say and What They do' discusses the authors' view in suggesting a strong co relation between pay incentives and motivation for employees. It highlights the discrepancies between the reported rating of pay incentives as a motivational factor from the employee ends and their behavioral studies in the event of a pay increase or incentives showing a strong positive co-relation. The authors' purpose in highlighting this co is to prevent Human Resource professionals from undervaluing the importance of pay incentives while attracting and retaining potential strong performer employees.

Thesis Statement

The critique paper attempts to analyze the authors' point of view regarding the lack of managerial acknowledgement of higher financial incentives as a motivating factor for retaining and attracting high potential employees. It further defends authors' view that pay is a strong motivational factor for employees but strongly underreported by employees, claimed for the fact that the behavioral studies suggest strong co relation between pay and higher performance, with support from other researches conducted.

Critical Analysis

Discrepancies between Said and Done

Surveys with direct queries about the importance of pay for employees are prone towards underreporting the actual value of its importance, claim Rynes et al. It is suggested throughout the paper, by the authors, due to the fact that most of the behavioral studies the authors cited in their research reveal a strong incoherence between the results of surveys of many behavioral researches with the surveys of the reported motivating factors for job seekers. The behavioral researches conducted show that employee motivation for seeking a job and performing well is strongly related to pay incentives with a positive relationship, whereas reports on motivational factors imply that more than 90% of surveyed respondents in all the cited surveys report pay to be the least or 2nd to least significant motivational factors.

The authors suggest that the cause for this discrepancy between the said and done is due to affect of the psychological phenomenon of social desirability theory, where the people are either reluctant to answer such questions positively, for the stigma attached with the greed for more money or due to the lack of frankness with the researcher thus receiving socially acceptable answers only. However for this theory It can be criticized that the cited researches are more than 20 years old based in 1970s to 1990s which can be considered irrelevant with the postmodernist structure of societies of today where a direct true answer is much more preferred/desired rather than an answer which complies with traditionally assigned roles of the gone years. A much more relevant study for the people of modern times may be more relevant and illuminating than the cited researches.

According to additional data used for the critical ...