Why Management Needs Open-Source to Motivate Employees
Category Leadership Management
Motivating IT workers is a tough task. Shankar Vedantam's article on "When Play Becomes Work" exposes the dynamics in the workplace that turns an interesting career in technology into an exercise of bureaucratic mediocrity:
Allowing or, even, encouraging, involvement with Open Source projects fits the managerial responsibility for recognizing one's "intellectual abilities" without having to worry over compensation and reimbursement.
I'm certainly not the first person to identify Open Source for its motivational value, but the studies which Vedantam has summarized present a persuasive argument for CIOs and HR.
Technorati Tags: Shankar Vedantam, Open Source
Motivating IT workers is a tough task. Shankar Vedantam's article on "When Play Becomes Work" exposes the dynamics in the workplace that turns an interesting career in technology into an exercise of bureaucratic mediocrity:
External rewards and punishments are counterproductive when it comes to activities that are meaningful -- tasks that telegraph something about a person's intellectual abilities, generosity, courage or values. People will voluntarily perform intellectually arduous work, for example, because it gives them pleasure to solve a puzzle or win a game of wits.
Allowing or, even, encouraging, involvement with Open Source projects fits the managerial responsibility for recognizing one's "intellectual abilities" without having to worry over compensation and reimbursement.
I'm certainly not the first person to identify Open Source for its motivational value, but the studies which Vedantam has summarized present a persuasive argument for CIOs and HR.
Technorati Tags: Shankar Vedantam, Open Source
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