Using the Organizational Rewards System as an OD Lever: Case Study of a Data-Based Intervention

Abstract

OD theorists and practitioners often mention the need to cope with organizational rewards systems when making interventions for planned change. Yet few field studies of interventions in rewards systems per se exist. This study reports a rewards system intervention as part of a multifaceted OD effort made in a large nonmanufacturing organization. Top management was confronted with data drawn from a stratified random sample of 386 top and middle management employees, 90 per cent of whom returned a specially developed rewards system survey instrument. Top management was asked to consider in depth the whole operation of rewards in a system and then to specify behavioral changes for all managerial and professional employees in line with reevaluated company objectives. With the aid of the consultant top management also authorized nonbehavioral changes in the technical systems and processes of personnel administration within the company in order to clarify employee concepts about the role of rewards in relation to company goals. The findings of the study suggest that rewards system interventions can be fruitful, that the greatest rewards are often perceived by managerial and professional employees as inherent in the work itself, and that improvements in the tools (such as the Likert Profile) for studying the functions and dysfunctions of rewards systems are needed.

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