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Case

Organizations can take steps to limit age discrimination and ensure that employees are treated fairly regardless of age. Many of the techniques to limit age discrimination come down to fundamentally sound management practices such as setting clear expectations, dealing with problems directly, communicating frequently with workers, and following consistent policies and procedures. This consistency can help ensure all employees are treated equally regardless of age.

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Marimar Ahmed
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172 views3 pages

Case

Organizations can take steps to limit age discrimination and ensure that employees are treated fairly regardless of age. Many of the techniques to limit age discrimination come down to fundamentally sound management practices such as setting clear expectations, dealing with problems directly, communicating frequently with workers, and following consistent policies and procedures. This consistency can help ensure all employees are treated equally regardless of age.

Uploaded by

Marimar Ahmed
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CASE ONE FOR ANALYSIS

Increasing Age Diversity in the Workplace

Over the past century, the average age of the workforce has continually increased as medical
science continues to enhance longevity and vitality. The fastest-growing segment of the
workforce is individuals over the age of 55.Recent medical research is exploring techniques that
could extend human life to 100 years or more. In addition,the combination of laws prohibiting
age discrimination and elimination of defined-benefit pension plans means that many individuals
continue to work well past the traditional age of retirement.
Unfortunately, older workers face a variety of discriminatory attitudes in the workplace.
Researchers scanned more than 100 publications on age discrimination to determine what types
of age stereotypes were most prevalent across studies. They found that stereotypes suggested job
performance declined with age, counter to empirical evidence presented earlier in this chapter
that relationships between age and core task performance are essentially nil. Stereotypes also
suggest that older workers are less adaptable, less flexible, and incapable of learning new
concepts. Research, on the other hand, suggests they are capable of learning and adapting to new
situations when these are framed appropriately.
Organizations can take steps to limit age discrimination and ensure that employees are treated
fairly regardless of age. Many of the techniques to limit age discrimination come down to
fundamentally sound management practices relevant for all employees: set clear expectations for
performance, deal with problems directly, communicate with workers frequently, and follow
clear policies and procedures consistently. In particular, management professionals note that
clarity and consistency can help ensure all employees are treated equally regardless of age.
Questions
1. What changes in employment relationships are likely to occur as the population ages?
2. Do you think increasing age diversity will create new challenges for managers? What types of
challenges do you expect will be most profound?
3. How can organizations cope with differences related to age discrimination in the workplace?
4. What types of policies might lead to charges of age discrimination, and how can they be
changed to eliminate these problems?
CASE TWO FOR ANALYSIS

Bonuses Can Backfire

It might seem obvious that people will be motivated by bonuses, but many scholars question this
premise. Alfie Kohn has long suggested that workers are “punished by rewards” and urges that
organizations avoid tying rewards to performance because of the negative consequences that can
result. As an alternative to rewards, some experts recommend that managers foster a positive,
upbeat work environment in hopes that enthusiasm will translate into motivation.
Although rewards can be motivating, they can reduce employees’ intrinsic interest in the tasks
they are doing. Along these lines, Mark Lepper of Stanford University found that children
rewarded for drawing with felt-tip pens no longer wished to use the pens at all when rewards
were removed, whereas children who were not rewarded for using the pens were eager to use
them. Similar experiments in which children completed puzzles have also shown that increasing
rewards can decrease interest in the rewarded task. Some have questioned the extent to which
these results generalize to working adults, but concern about rewards diminishing intrinsic
motivation persists.
Rewards can also lead to misbehavior by workers. Psychologist Edward Deci notes, “Once you
start making people’s rewards dependent on outcomes rather than behaviors, the evidence is
people will take the shortest route to those outcomes.” Consider factory workers paid purely
based on the number of units they produce. Because only quantity is rewarded, workers may
neglect quality. Executives rewarded strictly on the basis of quarterly stock price will tend to
ignore the long-term profitability and survival of the firm; they might even engage in illegal or unethical
behavior to increase their compensation. A review of research on pay-for-performance in medicine found that
doctors who were rewarded for treatment outcomes were reluctant to take on the most serious cases, where success
was less likely.
Although there might be some problems with providing incentives, the great majority of research
cited in his and the previous chapter shows that individuals given rewards for behavior will be
more likely to engage in the rewarded behaviors. It is also unlikely that individuals engaged in
very boring, repetitive tasks will lose their intrinsic motivation if the task is rewarded, because
they never had any intrinsic motivation to begin with. The real issue for managers is finding an
appropriate way to reward behaviors so desired behavior is increased while less-desired behavior
is reduced.

QUESTIONS
1. Do you think that, as a manager, you would use bonuses regularly? Why or why not?
2. Can you think of a time in your own life when being evaluated and rewarded on a specific
goal lead you to engage in negative or unproductive behavior?
3. Do you think providing group bonuses instead of individual bonuses would be more effective
or less effective? Why or why not?
4. How would you design a bonus/reward program to avoid the problems mentioned in this case?

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