BUSI 101 Week 6 Discussion Board Forum 3 Replies Example

Discussion Board Forum 3 Replies: Responding to Classmates on Pay and Motivation

BUSI 101 Introduction to Business, Discussion Board Forum 3 Replies

Thread by [Student Name]

The classmates and their threads are composites; the studies, textbook and Scripture cited are real.

Reply to Derek

Derek, you argued that the surest way to keep employees happy is a bigger paycheck. Pay certainly matters; Nickels et al. (2018) describe how pay that feels unfair causes dissatisfaction, which is why Herzberg treated it as a hygiene factor. My question is whether more pay produces lasting satisfaction once pay is fair.

Judge et al. (2010) pooled decades of research and reported that how much people earn tracks only faintly with how much they like their jobs, a correlation near .15. Even satisfaction with pay itself was only modestly related to how much people earned. People in high-paying jobs were not much more satisfied than people in lower-paying ones, which suggests that once pay is fair, other parts of the job do more to keep people engaged. Those other parts are the ones Herzberg called motivators, such as recognition, responsibility and interesting work, and they cost a manager attention more than money. A supervisor who explains decisions, notices good work and gives people room to grow may do more for satisfaction than a raise that is forgotten by the next paycheck. A raise is spent quickly; a good manager is felt every day.

Scripture speaks to this as well. Paul writes that he had learned to be content in whatever situation he was in (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Philippians 4:11). Contentment does not come from income alone, for employees or for anyone else.

If you were a manager with a small budget, would you spend it on raises or on things like training and recognition? I am also curious whether your answer would change for employees who are struggling to cover basic expenses, since pay may matter far more to them than the averages suggest.

Reply to Grace

Grace, your thread argued that people work hardest when they can see how their work helps others. I agree, and Nickels et al. (2018) make a similar point in discussing job enrichment, which gives workers a sense of the significance of their tasks.

Grant (2008) tested this idea with fundraisers at a university call center who phoned alumni to raise scholarship money. Callers who read brief stories from former students describing how scholarships had changed their lives went on to obtain more pledges and raise more money in the following weeks than callers in the comparison groups. A short reminder of the people their work served changed behavior in a measurable way. What makes the result striking is how little the intervention cost: no raise, no bonus and no new equipment, only a few minutes connecting the job to a real person. Grant argued that such reminders work because they make the significance of a task concrete rather than abstract, which fits the textbook's point that enriched jobs let workers see the whole of what they contribute.

Scripture describes work as service. Paul tells believers to serve one another through love (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Galatians 5:13), and the experiment suggests that seeing the person served is powerfully motivating.

How could a business whose employees never meet its customers, such as a warehouse, show workers the people their work helps? Perhaps sharing customer letters or showing where shipments end up would have a similar effect, but I would like to hear your ideas.

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 108-124. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.108

Judge, T. A., Piccolo, R. F., Podsakoff, N. P., Shaw, J. C., & Rich, B. L. (2010). The relationship between pay and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis of the literature. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77(2), 157-167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2010.04.002

Nickels, W. G., McHugh, J. M., & McHugh, S. M. (2018). Understanding business (12th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.