SOME BASIC DEFINITIONS
Organization
An organization may be defined as a collection of people who work together to achieve a wide variety of goals, both those of the various individuals and those of the organization as a whole.
As you might imagine, there are many definitions of the concept 'organization'. This definition by George and Jones is certainly a satisfactory one. An organization is, indeed, a collection of individuals working together to get something done. The important point about this definition, however, is that it highlights, and thus sensitizes us to, one very important fact. This fact is that people perform tasks in organizations in order to achieve two very important, and different, sets of outcomes.
One outcome is to help the organization move in a particular direction; i.e., in the direction of organizational goal achievement. This is important, to be sure. If organizational members didn't do this, organizations would never serve the numerous and vital functions they do in our society.
The other outcome members seek to achieve is their own personal goals. This might seem 'obvious' to you. The problem, however, is that it is not always obvious to organizations. What I mean by this is that organizations must recognize that people work in support of organizational goals only to the extent that there is a reasonable and acceptable 'quid pro quo' between the individual and the organization. That is to say, the contributions individuals make to organizations must be balanced by the inducements the organization provides in order to motivate members to behave in organizationally desirable ways!
So what idea does this obvious fact leave us with? It leaves us with the conclusion that organizations must pay very close attention to how its reward system is designed and administered. Why? So that the organization will be reasonably certain that it is providing its members with the extrinsic and intrinsic outcomes that they in fact...