Does Carrot-and-Stick Work?

When I was earning my Masters in Child Care Administration at Lesley College, Gwen Morgan pointed me in the direction of the Harvard Business Review as a thought provoker. One of the most provocative articles I read was "Assinine Attitudes about Motivation" (January, 1973) by Harry Levinson. In the article, while he always referred to leaders as "he," he did make some observations still worthy of attention:

"As long as anyone in a leadership role operates with a reward-punishment attitude toward motivation, he is implicitly assuming that he has (or should have) control over others and that they are in a jackass position in relation to him. This attitude is inevitably one of condescending contempt whose blatant mask is paternalism. The result is a continuing battle between those who seek to wield power and those who are subject to it. The consequences of this battle are increased inefficiency, lowered productivity, heightened absenteeism, theft and sometimes outright sabotage...

"Anyone who supervises someone else should look carefully at the assumptions he is making about motivation. He must assess the degree to which carrot-and-stick assumptions influence his own attitudes. For example, an executive might argue that if he tried to be nice to people, the stick would be softened. But even then he would merely be exhibiting paternalistic kindness. As long as his assumptions about people remain unchanged, his 'being nice' is only a disguised form of carrot-and-stick which seeks to increase loyalty by creating guilt in those who are the recipients of managerial largesse. His first priority should be to change his way of thinking about people."

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