Increasing Efficiency In Business, Walter Dill Scott [best novels for teenagers .TXT] 📗
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of others; but to be able to influence their
attitudes is of still greater significance.
We all know in a general way what we
mean by an attitude, but it is difficult to define
or to comprehend it exactly. I have one attitude
towards a snake and a totally different
one towards my students. If when hunting
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quail I happen upon a little harmless snake,
I find that I respond to the sight in a most
absurd manner. Dread and repulsion overcome
me. I can hardly restrain myself from
killing the snake, even though doing so will
frighten the birds I am hunting. I am predisposed
to react in a particular way towards
a snake. I sustain a particular attitude towards
it.
In the presence of my students I find that a
spirit of unselfish devotion and a desire to be
of assistance are likely to be uppermost.
That is to say, I sustain towards my students
an attitude of helpfulness, a predisposition
to react towards them in such a way that their
interests may be furthered. In fact, I find
that we all take particular attitudes towards
the people we know and towards every task of
our lives. These attitudes are very significant,
and yet they are often developed by circumstances
which made but little apparent impression
at the time, or may have been altogether
forgotten. I cannot recall, for instance,
the experience of my boyhood which developed
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my present absurd attitude toward harmless
snakes.
When witnessing a play, my attitude of
suspicion towards a particular character may
have been promoted by means of music and
color, by means of the total setting of the play,
or by some other means which never seemed to
catch my attention. These concealed agencies
threw me into an attitude of suspicion, even
while I was not aware that such a result was
being attempted.
This modern conception of psychology
teaches us that in influencing others we are
not successful until we have influenced their
attitudes. Children in school do not draw
patriotism from mere information about their
country. Patriotism comes with the cultivation
of the proper attitude towards one’s
native land.
_Success or failure in business is caused more
by mental attitude even than by mental capacities_.
Nothing but failure can result from the
mental attitude which we designate variously
as laziness, indifference, indolence, apathy,
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shiftlessness, and lack of interest. All business
successes are due in part to the attitudes
which we call industry, perseverance, interest,
application, enthusiasm, and diligence.
In any individual, too, these attitudes may
not be the same towards different objects
and may be subject to very profound changes
and developments. A schoolboy is frequently
lazy when engaged in the study of grammar,
but industrious when at work in manual
training. A young man who is an indolent
bookkeeper may prove to be an indefatigable
salesman. Another who has shown himself
apathetic and indifferent in a subordinate
position may suddenly wake up when cast
upon his own responsibility.
Few men of any intelligence can develop
the same degree of interest in each of several
tasks. Personally I find that my shiftlessness
in regard to some of my work is appalling.
Touching my main activities, however, I
judge that my industry is above reproach.
The preceding chapters (particularly the
chapters on Imitation, Competition, and Loy-
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alty) were attempts to discover and to present
the most effective motives or factors in producing
in workers an attitude of industry.
Based on a study of psychology and of business,
methods were presented which may be
utilized with but little expense and yet are
effective in awakening instinctive responses in
the worker and hence greatly increasing his
efficiency. The present chapter will deal with
an even more effective means of securing an
attitude of industry since it appeals to three
of the most fundamental and irresistible of
man’s instincts.
_With most of us the degree of our laziness or
our industry depends partly upon our affinity
for the work, but chiefly upon the motives which
stimulate us_.
For our ancestors, preservation depended
upon their securing the necessary means for
food, clothing, and shelter. In the struggle
for existence only those individuals and races
survived who were able to secure these necessary
articles. In climates and regions removed
from the tropics only the exceedingly
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industrious survived. In warm and fertile
lands those who were relatively industrious
managed to exist. Because of the absence of
the necessity for clothing and because of the
abundance of available food, races have developed
in the tropics which are notoriously
lazy. The human race, individually and collectively,
works only where and when it is
compelled to.
The energetic races, those which have advanced
in civilization, live in lands where the
struggle for existence has been continuous.
Necessity is a hard master, but its rule is
indispensable to worthy achievement. The instinct
of self-preservation and the industrious
attitude are responses which the human race
has learned to exercise, in the main, only in
case of need. Self-preservation is the first
law; where life and personal liberty are
dependent upon industry, idleness will not be
found. Wealth removes the obligation to
toil; hence the poor boy often outdistances
his more favored brother.
Individuals work for pay as a means of
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self-preservation, and unless that is satisfactory
other motives have but little weight
with them. The needs of the self which preservation
demands are continuously increasing.
The needs of the American-born laborer are
greater than those of the Chinaman. Regardless
of this higher standard of living and
the ever increasing number of “necessities,”
the instinct of self-preservation acts in connection
with them all.
_Almost without exception the interest of workers
centers in the wage. If they could retain
their accustomed wage with less effort, they would
do so. If the retention and increase depend on
individual production, they will respond to the
compulsion_.
Every student of psychology recognizes the
fact that the wage is more than a means of
self-preservation. Man is a distinctly social
creature. He has a social self as well as an
individual self. His social self demands social
approval as much as his individual self demands
bread, clothing, and shelter. In our
present industrial system this social distinc-
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tion is most often indicated by means of monetary
reward. The laborer not only demands
that his toil shall provide the means for self-preservation, but he seeks through his wages
the social distinction which he feels to be his
due. His desire for increase of wages is often
partly, and in some instances mainly, due to
his craving for distinction or social approval.
In such instances the wage is to be thought
of as something comparable to the score of a
ball player. The desire for a high score is
sufficient motive to beget the most extreme
exertion, even though the reward anticipated
is nothing more than a sign of distinction and
without any relationship whatever to self-preservation.
In common with some of the lower animals
man has an instinct to collect and hoard all
sorts of things. This instinct is spoken of
in psychology as the hoarding or proprietary
instinct. In performing instinctive acts we
do so with enthusiasm, but blindly. We take
great delight in the performing of the act,
even though the ultimate result of the act
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may be entirely unknown to us. The squirrel
collects and stores nuts with great delight and
industry. He has no idea of the approaching
winter, but gathers the nuts simply because
for him it is the most interesting process in his
experience.
Most persons display a like instinctive
tendency to make collections and hoard articles.
This is particularly apparent in collections
of such things as canceled postage
stamps, discarded buttons, pebbles, sticks,
magazines, and other non-useful articles.
When this hoarding instinct is not controlled
by reason or checked by other interests, we
have the miser. In a less degree, we all share
with the miser his hoarding instinct. We all
like to collect money just as the squirrel likes
to gather nuts. The octogenarian continues
to collect money with unabated zeal, even
though he be childless. He is probably not
aware that he is collecting merely for the pleasure
of collecting.
_Since the wage is the means ordinarily employed
to awaken in workers the three instincts_
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_of self-preservation, of social distinction, and of
hoarding, it is not strange that an industrial
age should regard it as the chief means of increasing
efficiency_.
The employer has not attempted to discover
what instincts were appealed to by the wage,
or the most economical method of stimulating
these instincts. He has not undervalued the
wage in securing efficiency, but rather has
assumed that the service secured must be in
direct proportion to the amount expended.
Such an assumption is not warranted.
Of two employers with equal forces and payrolls
one may receive much more and better
service than the other. It is not a question
merely of how much is spent but how wisely
it is spent. The wage secures service to the
degree in which it awakens these fundamental
instincts under consideration.
It is apparent, therefore, that other factors
than the amount of money expended in wages
are to be considered by every employer. Without
increasing the pay roll he may increase the
efficiency of his men. The employer who has
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determined the number of men he needs and
the wages he must pay has only begun to solve
his labor problem.
In the preparation of the present chapter a
large number of business men were interviewed
personally or by correspondence.
One of the questions asked was: “How do
you make the most of the wages paid your
men?”
As subsidiary to this general question three
other questions were asked: “In paying them
do you base the amount to be received by each
man upon a fixed salary? By some of the
men upon actual output—commissions or
piecework rates? By some upon a combination
including profit-sharing or bonus?”
The answers to these latter questions were
not uniform even among employers engaged
apparently in the same business and under
very similar conditions. Some reported that
all the methods suggested were used in their
establishment. Factory hands were employed
on piecework or on a premium or bonus basis
where conditions permitted; office assistants
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on fixed salaries; department managers upon
a combination including profit sharing. The
results reported, however, were far from uniform.
The astounding feature was the diversity
of opinion among successful managers
of employees. By various houses one or more
of the systems had been tried under apparently
favorable conditions and had been discarded.
On the other hand each of the systems was
advocated by equally successful business firms.
In judging of the relative merits of fixed
salaries as compared with other methods the
experiences of individual firms offer no certain
data. The relative merits and demerits
are best disclosed by a psychological analysis
of the manner in which the various devices
appeal to the employee’s instincts and reason.
_When wages are based on commission, piece
rate, or a bonus or premium system, the stimulus
to action is constantly present. Every stroke
of the hammer, every sale made, every figure
added, increases the wage. The wage thus continuously
beckons the worker to greater accomplishment_.
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All other considerations lose in importance,
and the mind becomes focused on output.
The worker is blinded to all other motives,
and invariably sacrifices quality unless this
be guarded by rigid inspection. The piecework
or task system thus influences the worker
directly and incessantly without regard for
the particular instinct to which it may be appealing.
Every increase in rate adds directly
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