Punishment can have a positive and negative effect but would it either create progression for an employee or ultimately lead to the down fall of the employee. The book Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change states “Punishment far from guarantees the mirror effect of positive reinforcement.” (Grenny et al.) In contrast Issie Lapowsky a staff writer for Inc.com and New York Daily News reports in a study of 150 schools that “As a business owner, you can boost your own productivity by setting consequences.” (Lapowsky) Now as we can see it is still not certain if punishment in an organization will or will not work for a boss. Even though punishment comes from the positive reinforcement family it is up in the air if it will work or not. As a manager, owner, or CEO you have to find the one thing that will work for you in your business. If employees can be motivated by pressure of losing things than use it, but on the flip side do not tread water for to long because it might also work against you. The Influencer states “When you reward performance, you typically know that the reward will help propel behavior in the desired direction, but with punishment you don’t know what your going to get.” (Grenny et al.) An employees performance can be either effected negatively or positively, but this all depends on each employees psychological state. If an employee can take criticism and punishment and use it as a learning point than yes it will work. On the other hand if an employee does not take criticism and punishment lightly than it can cause “undesired effects” (Grenny et al.) in a lot of ways. Not knowing these outcomes can cause chaos for a boss, but at the end of the day they need to make a decision on how they are going to run there business. Now if you think about this in depth as an owner or CEO ultimately what ever works best for you in your business is what your going to do, but i believe that a boss needs to be able to use both punishment and reward depending on the individual employees. Also be able to pick out and reward the vital behaviors that employees incorporate in their daily work to boost moral throughout the business, but do not go over board on rewarding. Make sure that you path the right path for the and “continually observe and reward behaviors that support valued processes.” (Grenny et al.)
References:
Grenny, Joseph. Patterson, Kerry. Maxfield, David. McMillan, Ron. Switzler, Al. Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change. McGraw Hill Education. 2013. Print.
Lapowsky, Issie. Reward vs. Punishment: What Motivates People More? Inc. Magazine. April 2, 2013. Web.
Organizational Communication Throughout Businesses 