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Employee Motivation
6. The supervisor should warn the employee of the BIBLIOGRAPHY
result of repeated violations. Sometimes suggestions Benton, Douglas A. (1998). Applied Human Relations (6th ed).
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
to the employee on ways to correct behavior are
Champagne, Paul J., and McAfee, R. Bruce (1989). Motivating
beneficial. Supervisors should be very reluctant to
Strategies for Performance and Productivity. New York: Quo-
impose disciplinary suspensions and to discharge
rum Books.
workers. Usually, discipline of this degree is reserved
Greenberg, Jerald (1999). Managing Behavior in Organizations:
for higher levels of management. However, even Science in Service to Practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pren-
though supervisors usually lack the power to admin- tice-Hall.
ister disciplinary suspensions or to discharge work- Hersey, Paul, Blanchard, Kenneth H., and Johnson, Dewey E.
ers, they are nearly always the ones who must (2001). Management of Organizational Behavior. Upper Sad-
recommend such action to higher management. dle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Rue, Leslie W., and Byars, Lloyd L. (2004). Supervision: Key
7. Finally, it is necessary to document the action taken
Link to Productivity. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
and inform others in the organization. Any time an
Whetten, David A., and Cameron, Kim S. (2005). Developing
organization takes disciplinary action, it must con- Management Skills. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice
sider the possibility of an Equal Employment Hall.
Opportunity complaint. The documentation should Wray, Ralph D., Luft, Roger L., and Highland, Patrick J.
be sufficiently detailed that another manager at a (1996). Fundamentals of Human Relations. Cincinnati, OH:
similar level in the organization would come to the South-Western Educational Publishing.
same conclusions or least see clearly why the deci- Yukl, Gary (2005). Leadership in Organizations. Upper Saddle
sion was made. Sufficient documentation does not River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice-Hall.
mean that every detail of an individual’s work needs
to be recorded. Rather, the manager should keep Marcia Anderson
accurate records of those elements that significantly
contribute to or hamper the work effort. In addi-
tion, this information, both positive and negative,
should be communicated to the employee either
orally or in writing. EMPLOYEE
MOTIVATION
SUMMARY SEE Motivation
If a company is to have a successful employee disciplinary
procedure, both the organization and the manager have
important roles to play. In practice, companies assume the
responsibility of establishing rules, communicating them
to employees, and developing a penalty system for enforc- ENTREPRENEURSHIP
ing them. The manager’s role in the disciplinary procedure A subject taught in many high schools and colleges, entre-
is distinct from that of the organization, yet the two over- preneurship is actually defined as “the state of being an
lap and support each other. Managers are responsible for entrepreneur.” An entrepreneur is an individual who
implementing the organization’s discipline procedure. owns, organizes, and manages a business and, in so doing,
This requires them to do several things: They must com- assumes the risk of either making a profit or losing the
investment. According to the Small Business Administra-
pare their organization’s rules with employee behavior to
tion (1999), the total number of businesses in the United
determine whether a rule has been broken; they must
determine whether they have sufficient proof that the States in 1995 was somewhere between 16 million and 24
million, of which approximately 15,000 were large. In
employee did indeed break the rule; they must decide
1997, there were an estimated 8.5 million businesses
what corrective action should be taken and then take it;
owned by women.
and they must document whatever action is taken. To the
extent that all managers perform these steps effectively, For any business to be successful, an adequate level of
funding must be furnished. The amount needed varies
the disciplinary procedure will be effective and there is a
according to the scope and nature of the business.
very good chance that employee behavior on the job can
be significantly improved. Another key factor in the success of an entrepreneurial
organization is planning, including planning for the mar-
SEE ALSO Motivation keting, management, and financial aspects of the business.
248 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BUSINESS AND FINANCE, SECOND EDITION