Employee reactions to a pay incentive plan.

Examined productivity records, personnel data, and attitudinal data obtained from (a) a group of workers with an incentive plan felt to be successful by management and (b) a group in a different plant with similar jobs but with an unsuccessful incentive plan. All workers were family men, had jobs involving unskilled manual labor, and all had high seniority. An analysis of the employees' attitudes showed that they trusted management, understood the plan, and saw a close relationship between their pay and their performance. Based upon expectancy theory, it was hypothesized that because these conditions existed, the workers would respond directly to the economic payoff structure of the plan. To test this hypothesis, a mathematical model was developed to predict the productivity of the work group. The data show a high degree of fit between the model's predictions and the actual productivity of the group. The implications of this for future research and for the design of incentive systems are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)