Hawthorne effect Essay Example for Free

Hawthorne effect Essay In today’s competitive climate lots of business owners are trying to get more from their workforce at the same time however their employees are trying to get more from their jobs. Reward and recognition programmes are one way that employers can motivate their staff into changing their key behaviors and work habits, thus benefitting the business. At the same time these schemes can also give the employee that little bit extra they are looking for from job. Motivation and reward are closely linked and there have been many credible theories written on the subject. It is widely recognised that human beings have a need to feel valued, both in their home lives and in the work place. To keep people motivated they need to be encouraged, rewarded (where appropriate) or recognised in their endeavors. One of the most valued of the motivation theories was written by Abraham Maslow from the USA back in the 1950’s. As part of his study into motivation Maslow developed a five tiered hierarchy of needs. He argued that the way to motivate individuals in the workplace and indeed in life is to satisfy the need sets one by one and in order. The first of the need sets and the most basic are the biological and physiological needs. These are survival requirements ingrained into us and evolved with mankind for tens of thousands of years, things such as food, shelter, warmth etc. In Maslow’s model it’s these needs that need to be satisfied before anything else, for example there is little point offering status as a motivator, when the individual has not yet satisfied basic requirements such as achieving a livable wage in order to eat, secure shelter etc. Reward Systems Peformance at Mark-it-Down Co Ltd is not what it should be and it has been decided between senior mangement and the Human Resources department that the introduction of a reward scheme is whats required to motivate the workforce and improve performance overall. The team in charge of deciding on the reward system to implement have come up up with the following suggestions: Variable Pay/Bonus Scheme A scheme of variable pay is one possible solution for the supermarket. In this scheme a portion of the employee’s pay would be considered at risk. This portion of the wage will be rewarded according to the performance of the company as a whole, on the basis of personal acheivement or based on the results of a department or team (this would probably be the most effective for this type of commercial business) Targets will be set at the beginning of a specified period (per annum is the common period) at the end of this period depending on the how well the targets have been met, a percentage or full quantity of the â€Å"at risk† part of their pay will be paid to the individual. This payment could take a few different forms, possibly a cash bonus, a quantity of stock or shares in the business. Whilst monetary reward has been proven to be effective and can encourage hard work amongst a team or individually, it has the disadvantage of impacting on profit made by the supermarket, for example if the grocery team meet their target for keeping the produce displays replenished to a defined level, then the whole grocery team will have earnt the bonus which must be paid from the profits. You also may have a situation where part of the workforce become demotivated, if their team or they personally have missed out on a bonus. Bonus and pay based rewards are considered differently depending on which motivation theory you study. For example in Maslows hierachy of needs, financial remuneration is only mentioned within the first tier of the hierachy which covers the most basic and obvious survival needs (physiological needs) Money was not considered by Maslow be a long term motivator. Frederick Herzberg considered financial reward to be amongst his â€Å"hygiene factors† that is that money in itself is not a motivator but actually will only act as a â€Å"dissatisfier† if the individual feels that their financial expectations and requirements of the role are not being met. In contrast to Maslow and Herzberg, John Stacey Adams might have argued that bonus schemes and pay related rewards can indeed be effective motivators. If the individual percieves that they are gettting a fair input to output balance in comparison to their peers eg, works hard (input) for a pay bonus (output) However that motivation through financial reward might not last. If the individual learns that a colleague or peer is benefiting from a better input to output ratio (eg doesn’t work as hard, but gets paid more) then the individual can quickly become dissatisfied. Promotion The introduction of a promotion programme could be a viable option. If the employee’s are aware that there is a realistic opportunity for them to progress within Mark It Down Co then they will likely feel motivated towards improving their standard of work in the hope that they will be one of the employee’s chosen for promotion. Maslow’s heierachy of needs supports promotion as a motivator, however depending on the person promotion/status as a form of motivation might be quite high up on the tiers and as such it would only work if the tiers below have already been satisfied. There could be several downsides to this however; often with promotion comes a rise in salary for the individual, which will of course impact on any profit made by the supermarket. There might also be a risk of a culture developing within the company whereby individuals take the attitude that they are â€Å"out for themselves† Employee of the Month One of the suggested recognition programmes is an employee of the month scheme. The idea is that all employee’s and managers are provided with a brief form to be used to nominate an employee that they believe deserves recognition (they should also explain the reasons behind there nomination) Due to the nominations for employee of the month being business wide not only is the playing field for recognition level, but there is the scope for recognising excellance in all of the different area’s of the organisation. This reward system could be as low or high cost as Mark it Down Co directors see fit. There is support for this type of recognition reward in Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Effect theory. Following his studies of workplace behaviour at the Hawthorne Plant Chicago in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s Mayo deduced that emotional factors acted as far better motivators than economical ones, as such a reward scheme of this nature could be very effective indeed, not to mention low cost. On the downside employee of the mon th schemes can have a tendancy to be considered a little cheesy and may require a little effort on the part of the programme managers in order to keep all of the staff motivated to particiate by completing the nomination slips. Pass on Praise Something as simple as passing on positive comments you have heard about an employee direct to the individual can have an extremely motivational effect. Again the hawthorne effect supports this belief. The praise could passed on by way of email, copying in managers or even with a visit to a senior managers office in order to receive thanks directly. The main advantage of this idea is that it costs nothing and is extremely easy to implement, however it may not be enough on its own, I would suggest that this tactic be used in conjunction with one of the other employee recognition schemes. All of the afore mentioned reward options have the potential to be effective, however the success of the chosen scheme could have a lot to do with the indviduals in nbeed of motivation. For instance in McGregors theory, the two employee types, X and Y differ greatly. What might motivate a Y employee (someone that is naturally happy to take on repsponsibilty and excepts work as part of life) might have the opposite effect on an employee of the X variety (someone that’s avoids repsonsibility and needs to be heavily supervised. The type of employee’s to be motivated should be considered before a motivation and reward scheme is decided upon. Monitoring Performance There are various ways to monitor the performance of your workforce. In the supermarket setting of Mark it Down Co, these could be; Physical: the number of sales made, the number of employee’s served, punctuality or attendance. There can be no disputing these types of performance indicators they are unambiguous and offer a realistic insight into the performance of a team or individual. Qualiative: these indicators are based on opinions and judgements (the view of a supervisor or the such like). These indicators are just as important as physical ones but managers should be careful to ensure that any measures of performance are considered fair by both the employees and employers. Goals and Targets Performance measurement can also be linked to the companies appraisal system, that is performance can be measured by assessing progress made on targets and goals agreed at the previous review. Appraisals are valuable in this respect. In order to effectively monitor performance in this way it is important to ensure that your employees are aware of the difference between target and goal. Goals: These are long term ambitions that should relate to the individual aims for progressing within the company. Targets: These are the steps taken in order to achieve the goal. There is an acronym that can act as a guide for the criteria that any targets should adhere to. They should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound. There is little point setting targets outside of these parameters. Monitoring progress towards identified goals and objectives as a way of determining who deserves reward does have its pros and cons though. On the one hand it can be considered an easily measurable method of monitoring performance, but on the other (particularly when the goals and targets have been set for a team or group) it could be argued that the fact that a company/team or individual is achieving its set goals and targets is not a true indication of who has made the most effort towards making that happen and as such is not an effective method for identifying who should qualify for reward. This is an important thing to consider when applying motivation and reward schemes, as an incorrect or ill managed monitoring technique could be costly to a business. For example a company will not want to be handing out cash bonuses to a whole team for reaching a set goal if it transpires that 3 out of 5 team members have made no improvement to their work output and had nothing to do with the team’s progress or achievement! When considering target setting as a way of monitoring progress and establishing where reward, praise or recognition should be given, serious thought should be given to how the company plans on pinpointing exactly who has been responsible for progress, both positive and negative. Benchmarking Another way to monitor company performance is to measure its successes and failures against those of other businesses in the same market. For example Mark it Down Co could measure its sales figures against one of its competitors, Lidl for instance. This method is known as bench marking and it’s all about taking the best practices of the highest achieving businesses in the same market and applying them back in the business in question. Job Evaluation Its has been brought to management attention that one of the employee’s at Mark it Down Co believes that he is receiving less salary for the same work as one of his peers. The following two methods can be used to evaluate the jobs of the individuals in question in order to assess whether theses concerns are justified or not. Job Ranking Job ranking is one of the simplest methods of job evaluation. Its considers the job as a whole and ranks it against another whole job within the organisation. This is usually carried out by the raters comparing the jobs using their general knowledge of the roles themselves. The jobs are ranked in order of the difficulty of the job itself or the importance of the role to the company. The procedure is followed for each department and then a comparison of jobs at all levels is made and jobs are given grade levels which define salary groups. The job ranking method is easily understood by all employees and simple to administer, however it does have its disadvantages, this technique is not really suitable for large organisations with complex structures where its is much harder to gain familiarity with all of the job roles. With this in mind it is probably not the solution that should be used at Mark it Down Co Ltd. Point Factor Method The point factor method establishes job values by assigning points to each area within a group of defined factors, below are some examples but there any many different factors that could be defined further and given points in order to be used for job evaluation; Skill: Within this group there might be points available for, experience or training. Effort: The points available for effort might be divided between mental and physical effort. In this method each job is rated using the defined points system. The points are totaled to form the final score for that particular role. From there jobs are grouped into salary grades (jobs with similar points ratings would be placed together in the same salary grade) This method can be tailored to meet the needs of specific companies and is suitable for use within larger organisations where there are a large number of jobs to evaluate. It’s an easy model to work with once it’s in place but can be very expensive and time consuming to develop in the first instance. In my opinion the point factor method would be a the better job evaluation model to use for Mark it Down Co. Job ranking is just too simplistic to cope with the amount of individuals roles at this organisation. The factors I think should be used to develop the point system are as follows; Skill – Experience, Training, Ability, Education Responsibilities – Monetary, Supervisory, Reporting Effort – Mental, Physical Environment – Job Location, Hazard’s In order to establish if the employee in question has a case for querying the wage he is on in comparison to his colleague. His overall score for the above factors should be calculated in order to establish his pay bracket. If the pay grade is the same as that of his colleague then his concerns are justified and his wage should be brought into line. If it is not and he is in a lower wage group then there is no case for a wage increase. Equally if the individuals wage bracket is determined to be higher than that of his colleagues then his wage should be adjusted to reflect as much.

Edgar Allan Poe Essay -- essays research papers

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe was born near London on the 19th of January 1809. His mother was an actor and his father was a doctor. When Poe was 2 years old his father disappeared. His mother, who was seriously ill in tuberculosis, took Poe and his sister to Richmond, Virginia. Poe's mother died soon after this. The two siblings became then separated and Poe was taken care of by the wealthy family of the Allans. Due to Mr. Allans work the family had to move to England, where they spent five years. In 1826 Poe started at "The University of Virginia". Although he was a good student he didn't succeed due to his gambling, fighting and drinking. When Mr. Allan found out about this Poe had to finish school and start working in Mr. Allan's tobaccoshop. After some time Poe moved to Boston where he started publishing his small poems and short stories in newspapers. In 1827, Poe's first book "Tamberlane and other poems" came under the pseudonym of "A Bostonian". These poems were very influenced by Byron and showed a youthful attitude. Later the same year he joined the army. He succeeded there and In 1829 he signed for an officer-training. This was the same year as he published his second book "Al Aaraaf, Tamberlane and minor poems" but this time under the name of Edgar A Poe. Before he left his training he got financial help from the other cadets to publish his third version of the book, although Poe called this book a second version. In this book there are famous poems as "To Helen" and "Israfel". These poems show the musical effect that has come to characterize Poe's poems. Later Poe moved to Baltimore to live with his ant. There he married his cousin who was only 13 years old. Then Poe moved to New York to become famous, but with almost no success. Poe had after 1837 his best period with his greatest works as "The murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) and "The fall of the house of Usher" (1839). Poe's wife passed away in 1847, and Poe took it hard. Yet he continued with his writing until he died the on 7th October 1849 by alcoholic poisoning. Edgar Allan Poe was mostly known for his analytic and criticising analyses. It was them which gave him respect as a critic. Poe was influenced by the British 18th century's romantic horror short stories. That is why he wrote those. He was also v... ...g to put together the impression with sentences like: "The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face." The whole story is about Roderick who has become isolated in his castle and there he has grown extreme sensitivity to senses. I think that Poe is trying to tell people that they shouldn't isolate themselves. They will then become like Roderick where the only thing that matters is his sister that passes away after some time. Along with that the sister dies, everything falls apart. I really mean fall apart then. Just after that the young man has left the house everything falls into pieces and it is suddenly obvious that the framework was weak although the house looked table. I had major expectations when I started reading this short story and I was not disappointed. It was great. The atmosphere was very realistic and the story was good. The ending comes as a surprise. It isn't at all what one can expect. As the matter of fact I liked all the short stories that I have read that Poe has written. He is really a great horror-writer. Maybe the best. But Stephen King is also great.

PROBLEM SET Monetary policy Essay

1. What impact will an unanticipated increase in the money supply have on the real interest rate, real output, and employment in the short run? How will expansionary monetary policy affect these factors in the long run? Explain. The money supply in an economy is the benchmark by which interest rates are determined. The supply of money is directly tied into the amount of money that can be loaned and borrowed in various capacities. The more money there is to loan, the less â€Å"expensive† it is to borrow that money. This is because when there is an increase in the money supply, the demand for that money fluctuates as well. This causes an increase in the overall amount of money being exchanged, and in turn, also causes a decrease in the real interest rate. The decrease in the interest rate also affects the economic appeal of domestically produced goods and services. This causes increased economic activity and the increase of real output because of that activity. When output increases, economic theory says that employers will typically need to hire more workers in order to handle their increased sales and output. However, this may not be the case in todays modern economy because modern businesses’ potential output are not directly proportional to their workforce. The long run economic impact depends on whether or not the unexpected short run money supply increase is permanent or not. If the money supply increase is permanent, then the short run effects mentioned above will drive the output of the economy above where it naturally should be. If the Fed decided to implement an Expansionary monetary policy to counteract this increase in the money supply then it would most likely try to reduce interest rates. This type of monetary stimulus affects the interest rates in the short term. This can eventually lead to long term economic change based on short term economic change being as the Fed intended. Expansionary policies are meant to push the economy towards full employment and spur economic growth. This means that if the policy is not closely monitored, or not removed at the right time, it can cause inflation, and thereby increase interest rates in the long run. 2. How rapidly has the money supply (M1) grown during the past twelve months? State the rate of growth (use http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/) and the most recent release, use the seasonally adjusted figures. Calculate the rate of growth across the year by taking the (new amount of M1- old amount of M1)/old amount of M1). Given the state of the economy, should monetary authorities increase or decrease the growth rate of money? Explain why. The M1 money supply grew by a rate of 8.86%. This is based on the Jan 2014 M1 supply number of 2,683.0 billion, and Jan 2013 number of 2,464.5 billion. This indicates a healthy growth rate of the economy and the M1 money supply. According to the reports issued by the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, Unemployment is decreasing, and inflation is remaining within their intended constraints. The Fed is currently maintaining policies to keep the growth rate of the M1 money supply in check. If the money supply were to increase at a more rapid rate, than it is likely that inflation would also increase. 3. Is stability in the general level of prices through time important? Why or why not? Should price stability be the goal of monetary policy? Explain your responses. Price stability in an economy is an essential quality for sustained growth. It is one of the key aspects that investors, both domestic and foreign, look at to determine whether or not to invest in the economy. If the price is unstable, than investors, especially foreign investors, do not see the economy as stable enough to risk their money in, and therefore invest elsewhere. This obviously is lost economic activity that can cause ripple effects across the market. When the general price level is stable however, the economy becomes appealing to investors, and causes them to spend their money in the market. This confidence that investors gain is a huge asset to economic growth and development. When people and businesses are confident that their money is going to be put to good use, they are much more likely to spend it. Domestically, price stability is important for the government,  and the Fed to be able to maintain fiscal policies. The Central Bank is also affected by the stability of prices when it makes monetary adjustments and investments. Therefore, it is vital for the Fed to monitor and attempt to stabilize prices as much as possible. 4. Compare and contrast the impact of an unexpected shift to a more expansionary monetary policy under rational and adaptive expectations. Are the implications of the two theories different in the short run? Are the long-run implications different? Explain. When monetary policy is created, there are 2 popular theories that guide the actions of decision makers. One of these policies is Rational Expectations. The theory of Rational Expectations is based on the presumption that the economic future of a market can be systematically predicted based on hypothesis and rational thought. This is the most widely used theory by today’s economic analysts and decision makers at the Fed. The second theory is Adaptive expectations. This theory is based on the idea that to predict an economy’s future, one has to analyze its past. The Impact of an unexpected shift to a more expansionary monetary policy under adaptive expectations will temporarily stimulate output and employment. Under Rational expectations, the same situation would result in little to no change in output.

Tourettes Syndrome Essay - 2102 Words

Tourettes Syndrome Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome (TS) is a sporadic or inherited complex neuropsychiatric disorder (not an illness) influenced by neurological, psychological, and sociological factors. It is characterized by involuntary tics - sudden, rapid, recurrent nonrhythmic movements or noises that occur repeatedly in the same way (Temple, 2003). The symptoms include: both multiple motor tics and one or more phonic tics (which may or may not include vocalizations and which sometimes include outbursts of swearing) present at some time during the disorder although not necessarily simultaneously; tics occur many times a day (usually in bouts) nearly every day or†¦show more content†¦However, as Nass and Bressman (2002) state, the relationships between both ADHD and TS and OCD and TS are complex and not yet clear. In addition to this, until now linkage analysis has pointed to a number of chromosomal locations, but has failed to ident ify a clear candidate gene(s). Treating TS Treating TS has been a controversial issue among scientist for years. The kind of medication that should be prescribed to people with TS is currently under debate mainly because TS is frequently accompanied along with other disorders such as OCD or ADHD. Due to that there is no one medication that is absolutely beneficial for all persons with TS. Moreover, none of the available medications for TS completely eliminates symptoms and in addition, all medications have side effects. Instead, the available TS medications are only able to help reduce specific symptoms. Some patients who require medication to reduce the frequency and intensity of the tic symptoms may be treated with neuroleptic drugs such as haloperidol and pimozide (Abuzzahab Brown, 2001). These medications are usually given in very small doses that are increased slowly until the best possible balance between symptoms and side effects is achieved. 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