ABSTRACT
Most businesses pay by the hour or week or month simply because most others pay that way. That is the custom. Managers use aversive methods because that is what their parents and teachers and managers used. It must simply never occur to the leaders of many companies that other methods of paying and managing are possible. Surely one reason many companies can’t consider pay for performance is the fact that they have had such poor management methods centered around aversive control that workers have developed countercontrol procedures. The countercontrol has become so effective that the accountability involved in pay for performance is almost impossible. Pay for performance has limited popularity because there is so little research to demonstrate just what the results of such pay methods are. Most of the field tests of performance-dependent pay have been conducted with such poor methodology that little can be safely concluded about results.
