ABSTRACT
European business has long considered the employee as economic man, motivated to work by a financial remuneration. Gradually, this attitude has been changing of late. There are various reasons to explain this change, e.g. the transition from owner-control to professional management, the latter being salaried employees themselves; the transition from a negotiated to a competitive environment, which necessitates the mobilization of all potential resources, including proper human motivation; transition from capital-labour polarization to osmosis, which reduces the distance between employer and employee in a number of respects, inter alia in respect of the relative importance of money and the bearing of responsibility; information and research work carried out in this field, mainly in the United States.
