Group norms restricting productivit

Group norms restricting productivity are very troublesome to managers, and they are particularly perplexing because they seem to be irrational. Why should a group of workers collectively decide to hold down their level of production when they are paid only for what they produce? The problem centers around timing the job and establishing performance standards. Workers know that performance standards are somewhat arbitrary. They believe that if they consistently produce more than the standard the industrial engineer will return and retime the job. Then they will be expected to produce more work for the same amount of Pay.Management has been guilty of retiming jobs often enough in some organizations to justify the workers fears. Several interesting studies have closely examined the games that played by workers and industrial engineers in setting performance standards. Since industrial engineers know that workers intentionally work slowly, they arbitrarily tighten the standards above the measured times. But the workers realize that the industrial engineers suspect them of working slowly so they add unnecessary and inefficient movements to look busy (which the industrial engineers expect and try to disregard.One of Taylor's solutions to the rate-restriction problem was to have workers work alone. Group norms cannot restrict output if a worker is not in a work group. Another solution relies on better selection only hire workers who will accept the performance standards and work as fast as possible. In recent years various organizational development techniques, such as group discussion and team-building sessions, have been proposed to change group norms.4.6.3 Skill and Knowledge Based PayA valuable strategy for increasing organizational flexibility and rewarding team efforts is through skill-based pay or a pay-for-knowledge program. These programs reward employees for their ability to perform an array of related tasks or skills rather than for the actual work performed. Rewarding employees for their ability rather than for their productivity is an important difference between these incentives and pay-for-performance Incentives.In a skill-based pay program, jobs are grouped into job families according to the kinds of related skills required to perform them. In pay-for-knowledge programs, the job families are grouped according to knowledge requirements. Employees are paid according to the skills or knowledge they have demonstrated New employees are paid the entry level wage rate, and they receive pay increases as they acquire additional skills or knowledge. Employees who have mastered additional skills or knowledge receive added pay for this mastery even when they are not currently using them.