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Role of

Motivation in
the current
business
paradigm
CARROT OR
STICK?

Nitish R M

169278034

Deepan Sarkar

169278102

Saurav karan

169278079

Balaji J

169278026

Proposition
Theres a mismatch between
what science knows and what
business does
(Well try to establish this with the help of correlating
two studies.)

Candle Problem
Study conducted by Carl dunker and Sam Glutberg at MIT and
Carnegie Melon.
Case 1, Case 2: Test Group vs Incentivized Group
Incentives were 20$ for top 10% and 50$ for top performer
Same experiment repeated in Madurai, India
Due to PPP, Incentives here were for higher stakes and hence
would be able to establish if maybe the incentives were too
small for MIT students
Incentives were 2 weeks salary for top 10% and 2 months
Salary for top performer

Results
MIT: Case 1- Incentivized group was behind the test group by
average of 3.5
minutes
Case 2- Incentivized group beat the times of the test
group by a huge margin
Madurai: Case 1- Incentivized group did drastically worse to the
test group with some participants not even arriving at the
solution
Case 2- Incentivized group did faster than the test
group by a huge margin and even beat the time of the MIT grad
students

Marshmallow Challenge
70 Teams consisting of Architects,Engineers and even CTOs of
Fortune 50
So who performs consistently worse?
Recent Bussiness School Graduates
So who performs consistently well?
Recent Kindergarden Graduates

Inferences Drawn
As long as the task was rudimentary ( Mechanical skill) higher
the pay the better the performance
But even rudimentary cognitive tasks with the larger the reward
lead to poorer performance
Functional fixedness plays an important role in both studies
Carrot or stick approach prove to be best suited for 20th century
tasks but irrelevant for 21st century tasks
Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose were the defining traits gauged
as most important motivators as long as the pay was at a level
that the work mattered to the Employee

Instances in todays business


world that concur with infrences
ROWE
Microsoft Encarta Vs Wikipedia
Atlassian and Google
Facebook
Tesla

References
The use of verbal protocols as data: An analysis of insight in the candle
problem
JI Fleck, RW Weisberg - Memory & Cognition, 2004 - Springer
An information-processing model of Duncker's candle problem
R Weisberg, JM Suls - Cognitive Psychology, 1973 Elsevier
Immunity to functional fixedness in young children
TP German, MA Defeyter - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2000 Springer
The marshmallow challenge
T Wujec - Retrieved June, 2010 - academia.edu
Motivation, behaviour and the microfoundations of public services
G Stoker, A Moseley - London, 2010 - books.google.com

Thank You

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