MZMORALE ZEROthe antithesis of employee engagement
DIRECTIVE 026 / FAIRNESS

MAKE THE BONUS ZERO-SUM

Nothing strengthens teamwork like explaining that a colleague's gain requires somebody else's loss.

Create a relative-performance pool with a fixed number of winners. Encourage knowledge sharing, mutual support and enterprise thinking while ensuring that helping another employee may reduce the helper's own probability of receiving the prize.

Primary: FAIRNESSBELONGINGPOWER
RATIONALE
Tournament incentives make ranking easy and can produce effort without requiring managers to price every contribution directly.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
Employees collaborate enthusiastically until collaboration affects the leaderboard.
COMMON FAILURE
Using competitive incentives only where the task and safeguards justify them, and checking for cooperation costs, gaming and destructive behavior rather than treating effort as the only response.
STATUS
Canonical / approved

Reconstructed Handbook series.

THE UNFORTUNATE PART

Unfortunately, the research…

Claim

Tournament incentives can raise effort, but research also shows that larger prize spreads can increase destructive competitive behavior when sabotage is possible.

Evidence

Controlled experimental evidence found both effort and sabotage increased as tournament wage spreads increased; communication and flatter prize structures reduced sabotage under the study conditions.

Strength: Moderate

Sources

The Directive is satire. The research summary is not. Evidence is stated separately and qualified to the underlying literature rather than treated as proof of the joke.

PREVIOUS

OPEN THE OFFICE

NEXT

INTERRUPT FOR VISIBILITY