Ideas for developing a positive and productive culture at the workplace - empowering and involving others. To have such a culture at the workplace (instead of letting groups and individuals compete with each other), the starting point of developing such habits/qualities would be our education systems where individuals are brought up. As a result, our education systems should keep away from promoting competition among individual learners/groups to start with. Instead, we should direct the individual learners to find their unique selves in a process of self-authorship/self-identification. These unique selves preserved (without getting destroyed in a one size fits all systems) can then contribute to our societies in unique and positive ways leading to social innovations.
https://www.leadershipandchangemagazine.com/involving-and-empowering-others/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_recent_activity_details_shares%3BMEGr%2B7M6QeKOtHPjFqOURQ%3D%3D&licu=urn%3Ali%3Acontrol%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base_recent_activity_details_shares-object#.WrF5MdbozlY.linkedin
The first thing is to recognise employees as human beings, not just cogs. Give people respect, and you get respect in return. Second give some amount of freedom, stop micromanaging. Third, let them work in cross department and cross cultures. And see the results.
Thank you for that excellent question. Nevertheless, I would like to ask what exactly you mean and which axioms underlie your statement:
1) What exactly is a productive culture? Is this the classical economic understanding of productivity or something else?
2) Which axiom is behind the claim that the elimination of competition between groups leads to more productivity (that's how I understand your statement)?
Assuming we are talking about a classic understanding of productivity, I have made the experiemce that competition can be very beneficial. But it is then a question of clear rules, respect and maybe incentives.
The question includes the answer, which is not forcefuly the one best way to productivity. Taking productivity as the balance between all factors of production that will give the greatest output for the smallest effort, it is the job of management to make the best use of resources. As to HR, they require motivation, participation, satisfaction, incentives, and rewards, leadership, status and functions. Involving and empowering is not enough, per se, to guarantee a culture of productivity
Chanda,
Take a look at Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a macro-theory from Deci & Ryan. It's a broad theory of human motivation that generally explain how humans behave and what are the conditions that facilitate or inhibit human well-being. Has been applied in sports, education, training, politics, religion, health and organisations. The theory covers the contiguum from amotivation through External Regulation, through to the highest level of self-engagement, self-endorsement and self-determination ie Intrinsic Motivation. The implications for well being, joy, satisfaction, peace, bliss are well laid out.
In the context of the wokplace, the manager is the key actor who sets the tone and creates the sociology of the workplace. The papers below ties the theory of SDT with the compatible managerial actions for optimun results.
Motivation is critical to both employee innovative work behaviour and employee innovative work output (see paper and dissertation referenced below) and hance productivity at the workplace. In empirical studies the significance has been established for employees that are both intrinsically motivated as well as those that are "identified regulated" meaning that the employees are externally motivated but self-identifies with the firm values. Not surprisingly, the key significant antecedent driving employee motivation, of both types, is the quality of the managerial actions in the organisation. Higher quality management translates to higher levels of motivation and innovation and hence productivity. What are the dimensions of quality of management ? These are;
- Trust
- Support
- Discipline
- Stretch
Chapter Employee motivation and working innovatively; the quality of...
Preprint Optimising the pillars driving sustainable firm innovation; ...
Thesis Perceived quality of management and employee innovative work...
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