Productivity and the Decrease in Controllable Rejects?

¶ … productivity and the decrease in controllable rejects?

It may be that the workers were given more autonomy now and they felt more creative and in charge of decisions that they may wish to effectuate.

This coheres with Maslow's model of motivation where he ranks creativity as the highest hierarchy on the pyramid. Workers are not only motivated by money. Many individuals are motivated as much and sometimes even more by acknowledgment, recognition, and their higher needs being met.

Previously, workers had to cohere to an "assembly line [that] had been carefully balanced by industrial engineers, who had used a time and motion study to break the job down into subassembly tasks, each requiring about three minutes to accomplish. The amount of time calculated for each subassembly had also been "balanced" so that the task performed by each worker was supposed to take almost exactly the same amount of time. The workers were paid a straight hourly rate. " Now the workers built the hotplates individually tasking their creativity and stimulating them. No wonder, their morale was higher! their moral was higher. As one person put it, "Now, this is my hotplate."

2. What might account for the drop in absenteeism and the increase in moral?

Before, workers may likely have felt robots stultified by a demanding system that threatened their autonomy and sense of individuality. employees may feel their autonomy threatened in that they feel that they have a 'boss' who dominates them.

Real or perceived threats against autonomy are often a cause for loss of motivation. Motivation can be restored by the manager, as in this case, rejecting an authoritarian style of leadership and adopting a more democratic or laissez faire style where either he involves his employees together as a team to work with him and make joint decision-making (this can be most effectively accomplished if the organization were small) or, as in this case, makes them more responsible for the outcome and liberates them to accomplish the job as they wish provided that it would accomplished according to certain conditions. This more democratic, laissez faire style often makes individuals feel more respected whilst catering to their need for creativity and fulfillment.

What were the major changes in the situation? Which changes were under the control of the manager? Which were controlled by workers?

The technical major change was workers moving from a factory style to a situation where each completed the hotplate individually in a customized way. Initially, workers were monitored every step of the way and treated as though they were trusted only to follow instructions and do their part of the job. With changes, however each worker, after having taught how to do so, began to assemble the entire hotplate himself. The workers were shown that they could be trusted. They were treated as individuals and, as a result, they reciprocated in kind: "Productivity climbed quickly. By the end of the year, it had leveled off at about 84% higher than during the first half of the year, ...Controllable rejects had dropped from about 23% to 1% during the same period. Absenteeism had dropped from 8% to less than 1%...The full-time inspector was transferred to another job in the organization."

4. What might happen if the workers went back to the old assembly line method?

The adverse outcome may be even worse than before since the workers had had opportunity to taste 'freedom' and had grown to appreciate it. Returning to the original situation where they had seemed devalued may well lead to organizational conflict, turnover, and strikes or riots.