Book Review: Organizational Behavior: Organizational Behavior: A Modern Behavioral Approach to Management
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Abstract
the psychologist, and the wage and salary administrator must each participate in the examination of compensation. Theory and research must be blended with the records of actual practice in the industrial environment. In any theory of managerial motivation there must be agreement concerning the definitions of management and motivation -definitions that can explain the relationship of the two words to each other-since these terms are not mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, the authors never do reach an adequate definition of management', which is described in such vague terms as "firstline supervision," "general supervision," and "top management." Seldom is the broad concept of executive management mentioned-except in an essay by Arch Patton, near the end of the book. Because of this looseness in the definition of management, the related concept of motivation is also unclear. When discussing the subject of money as a motivator, for example, most of the authors seem to prefer to trace this source of motivation only to the employee's immediate supervisor, rather than to the company as a whole. Money's impact on motivation, at least according to their research, seems to be the product of the supervisor-employee relationship rather than the company-employee relationship. Much of the psychological research relating to motivation is far afield from problems of compensation and the challengenot met here-is to link the two areas. Many of the authors allude to possible solutions of problems involved in compensation, but all eventually hedge by saying, in effect, that solutions can only come after further research. The studies of task enhancement, for example, are supposed to help in understanding the tyrannies of wage compensation, but no author is willing to extrapolate the results of these studies to real-world settings. One cannot, however, come to grips with motivation without considering productivity, and in this respect this volume makes a real contribution. More and more in the future, both management and labor will face the need to deal with earnings in relation to productivity. Management has the same opportunity to gain rewards from increased productivity as does the piece-rate worker, and, indeed, spectacular payments have been made to executives of profitable companies. But David McClelland warns that productivity is not a variable that can be easily manipulated: "In summary, then, money is just one tool among many for managing motivation. It is a dangerous tool because it is so misleadingly concrete that it seduces many managers into neglecting the climate variables that really affect productivity." Walter H. Powell