One of the things that really affects people's belief that their effort will be translated into rewards, namely that their effort is likely to control rewards, are the extent to which they are interdependent with other individuals. Right, so we can think about motivation as managing perceptions, and the key here is that individuals have to have self-efficacy. They have to believe in their ability to do the work. And that is a critical perception that must be managed by leaders. In this sense training actually takes on two critical roles. Training provides individuals the skills necessary to translate their effort into accomplishment, but it also provides individuals the confidence to translate effort into their accomplishments. In other words training helps individuals believe that they are capable of rewardable performance, and therefore that gives them the motivation to actually try hard, but sometimes others can be a critical concern in this equation because we know in organizations, work is interdependent. That is no one can achieve goals without the help of other individuals. But other individuals become an uncertainty in your ability to translate your own effort into rewards. This is captured in the idea of a social dilemma. Social dilemmas have to do with how individuals allocate resources, their time and their effort between individual and group tasks or initiatives, and remember in most organizations, performance is interdependent. You can't really achieve anything alone, you have to depend a little bit on other individuals. The problem is those other individuals become a potential disrupter of your perceived control between your effort and the rewards that you would like to achieve. Formally speaking, a social dilemma arises when the choice or behavior that is best for the individual results in undesirable consequences for the group, should all members behave similarly. Great example of this comes from a historical case called the tragedy of the commons. And the tragedy of the commons had to do with a small English village that had a commons. And the commons was considered a grazing area that anyone could use. The problem of course, is that if anyone overgrazed their cattle on the commons, they would kill the grass and then the commons would not be available for everyone to use. So everyone had to limit their use of the commons, so that everyone would be able to use the commons on a long term basis. Social dilemma is really about selfish behavior, to the extend that people are selfish and don't take into account other people's issues, then we run the risk that we are not creating value in our organizations. Lets take a couple of examples of this. One of my favorites is something here in Champaign that was recently built, which is the dog park. The dog park is a facility that anyone can use, it's a public good. Anyone can bring their dog out to the dog park. The city sells memberships to the dog park at about $25 a year and the membership revenues are used to pay for maintaining the dog park. If there are no memberships, there is no money to maintain the dog park. No one really checks memberships at the dog park because it's all basically on an honor system. So the problem here is that it's in everyone's selfish interest to free ride, that is to not buy a membership. To just show up and let your dog use the dog park and not worry about paying. The problem is if everyone free rides, that is if everyone just shows up and lets their dog use the dog park, but nobody pays for membership, then there's no membership money to maintain the dog park. So the problem here is attention between what's good for the individual, and what's good for the group. In many situations, it's very much in an individual's interest to be selfish, but if everybody is selfish, then the group doesn't really create value. And then there's no value created for the group to enjoy. Here's another example you'll probably be very familiar with. The team meeting. We've all been there. Materials were sent out for everyone to read, planning to discuss the materials at the meeting. The discussion starts, but not everyone seems to be participating. In fact, two members of the group don't seem to be engaged at all. You further notice that two other members of the group are making comments which don't seem to have very much at all to do with the material. And then it dawns on you. None of them read the materials. You're the only person who prepared for this meeting. And, of course, now you resent it. In this case, the value that would be created is if everyone is prepared adequately and we have a good discussion about whatever question we're trying to address or whatever problem we're trying to solve and then there's a solution in place that everybody can benefit from. The selfishness here is that everybody hopes that somebody else will solve the problem without them having to invest their own personal resources, namely their own personal time and effort to solve that problem. But if everybody decides not to invest their personal time and effort, then the problem doesn't get solved, no value is created, and there's no benefit for anybody to enjoy. Social dilemmas give rise to problems because of two things: free riding and social loafing. Free riding is when people simply don't invest in group effort. So there's some group initiative, like a dog park, or a group meeting and some people decide they're just not going to invest. They're going to hope that other people will be able to create a public good and that they will be able to free ride. That they will be able to enjoy the benefits without paying the cost of actually helping create it. A more subtle version of this is called social loafing. Social loafing occurs when you pretend to be doing your fair share of the work, but in fact you don't actually do your fair share of the work. You've probably been in a meeting at least once in your life where everybody was social loafing. Nobody had done the work in the hopes that everybody else had done the work and, as a consequence, no one was prepared for the meeting and the meeting didn't work very well. Social loafing is a real problem in organizations because it's very hard to tell whether people are actually loafing or whether they’re trying very hard and just not making any progress. We can also worry about the idea of defection. Defection is when people decide they're not going to do their fair share of the work. Free riding and social loafing are both examples of defection. And we can imagine defection actually occurring for two reasons. Offensive defection is when people are trying to behave opportunistically. That is, they are hoping, if they don't do their fair share of the work, the public good will still be created, but, lo and behold, they will not have had to invest to do it. That's a problem particularly if everybody offensively defects because then the public good isn't created. But a more subtle problem here is that sometimes people defect defensively. Defensive defection occurs when people defect, that is they don't contribute their fair share of the effort because they're afraid other people are not going to do their fair share, and they don't want to be played for a sucker. That is, they don't want to be taken advantage of by others. So defection that is either free-riding or social loafing in group efforts can occur either offensively or defensively. But, at the end of the day, the result is the same. When people free-ride, when people socially loaf, that decreases the ability of the group to create value. And when the group fails to create value, the group suffers as a whole. We can think about this motivationally as other people becoming a huge uncertainty in organizational initiatives. If I'm worried that you're going to take advantage of me, or if I'm worried that you're not going to do your fair share of the work, then maybe that leads me to believe I shouldn't really do my fair share of the work. The uncertainty that other people will do their fair share of their work, can dramatically decrease motivation because it decreases the perception that my effort controls the consequences that I'm interested in. In social dilemmas, that means my effort can't control the creation of the public good. I need other people to help me create that public good, but if I can't count on them to do their fair share of the work, my motivation will go down, I will not be motivated to invest my effort, my time, and other resources that I might have in producing the public good, and then the public good may not be created. So motivation is not just about contingencies and consequences, it's about the perception of contingencies and consequences. And in organizations one of the most important perceptions is the perception that other people are trying hard and working together to create value for the organization. When individuals are concerned that others are not working hard, that they are either free riding or social loafing, that may decrease their motivation to invest, and when people start decreasing in terms of their motivation to invest, that means the public good may not be created. Or in other words, the organization may fail to create value.
