Drawing on research conducted over a number of years in a range of different organisations, how payment systems can be designed and implemented to increase the likelihood of success is explained. In addition, it is suggested that a participative approach to change can produce beneficial...

This article is the second in the series detailing recent and continuing research into Payment Systems. The previous article dealt with some of the main features found to be important in scheme success, whilst this one, “Participation in Payment System Design”, shows how the research results...

Theories about rational motivation generate financial incentive payment systems; theories about self‐fulfilment motivation generate measured daywork systems. But empirical evidence indicates that the effect of a motivator on an employee is contingent upon the circumstances in which the...

The concept of working in groups has typically been applied to different industries and different levels within firms in distinct ways, and for distinct reasons. Table I shows the major types of group working which have been employed most commonly with particular technologies and organisational...

A DISTINCTION must be made at the outset between wage drift —the movement of plant‐level earnings away from centrally negotiated rates of pay; and productivity drift —the movement of plant‐level earnings away from plant productivity. In this paper, I focus on the latter, in the belief...

Most significant organisational changes originate with higher management, and are “pushed through” in one way or another. Resistance from the “lower levels” is usually expected and plans are made to overcome it. The phrase “selling the change” is commonly used to describe a process...

The credibility of the comparisons that are made between wage rates and earnings in supposedly similar jobs is frequently a major factor in collective bargaining in an industry or company. This is so, whatever other arguments are used, such as productivity.

Pilkington Brothers is by any token a highly successful manufacturing company. From its centre in St Helens, Lancashire, this 150‐year old glass company has in the past few decades expanded very rapidly. It is now a large and complex international business. Pilkington have plants in Canada,...

It is useful to distinguish, very broadly, three contrasting approaches to organizational design. The first of these argues, straightforwardly and persuasively, that to design for organizational efficiency, one must begin from a knowledge of the properties of the individual person. The...

In this paper we demonstrate that it is possible, and economical, to design and install self‐regulating pay structures in manufacturing plants (that is to say, fairly typical British manufacturing plants) with the following characteristics: