Re: Incentives for TQM activities

[TQNELSON@aol.com]

I must politely disagree with those who are attempting to defend incentives 
of any type. Simply put, all incentives are a direct contradiction of the 
SoPK. All incentives are based on the belief that external influences are 
required for action (whether "carrots" or "sticks"), and that the intrinsic 
factors of self value, love, vision/inspiration are not valid/adequate.

I agree with the earlier suggestion that such may well apply to animals (and 
"Skinnerites"), but they have no place in a psychologically sound, human 
based value system. Contrary to many popular practices, beliefs, moneymaking 
programs, etc., all founded on the rewarding of genetic, temporal, geographic 
accidents. Basically stated, as noted above, all "incentive" programs are 
totally opposed to the entire SoPK and all that they can accomplish, from a 
systems perspective (contrary to the many short term/quick fix/assignable 
cause examples many will want to use as the basis for argument), is harm.

In addition to the many citations of WED we might give here (he was 100% 
opposed to all incentives from "gold stars,' to grades, to bonuses, etc.), we 
recommend interested readers review the works of Alfie Kohn (ref. 
www.AlfieKohn.com) and the works of Dr. Joyce Orsini (she contributed 
excellent comments on this subject in the handout material at the June 
28-July1, 1993 Deming 4-Day seminar (it was available via satellite downlink 
and I had the good fortune to be the on-site facilitator here in Sacramento), 
"Bonuses: What is the Impact?"  

Del Nelson  
American River College

When "We, the people....."
have been replaced by dollars profits and greed,
it is time to start over.
========================================================================