Why greed is the best and worst motivator

Greed is what the world goes around these days, it is often used to motivate someone to either, get something done, or as a reward for something they did good. But can this be a bad thing to do? We all know that everyone loves money, but are we relying on it too much to get people motivated?

Greed is defined as as, 'Intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.' In this case it's wealth. People work for money, it’s as simple as that. But people can often misuse that power. People have been manipulated, swayed and even controlled by money.

Philippe Gigantes (2002a) believed that, “whatever the national culture, people have sought to acquire what it takes to satisfy five basic desires: security, shelter, sustenance, sex, and self-expression.”

Greed in the workplace is another thing to take into consideration. There are 3 types of employees in the workplace.

Firstly, we have the low-risk employees who have that strong work ethic who is reliable to help the company get their sales quota or promote a product. These people are usually the most sort after in businesses.

Next, we have the Medium-risk employees, these are more subtle or less obvious than the other behaviours. These employees have a tendency of “Lying about hours worked, misusing an expense account, accepting kickbacks, and covering up mistakes” (Robinson & Bennett, 1995).

And on the end of the list we have the High-risk employees, these will go to great lengths to get out of the work but still get paid. Examples of this include envy, power lust, exploitation, manipulation, deception, and a sense of entitlement.

These types of behaviours are only dependant on the employee. This is also why they conduct interviews with the future employee for these types of risk behaviours. But these behaviours aren’t only in the workplace, these types of behaviours are found everywhere.

There have been studies all around the world, as an example from Mrs Lisa Anderson, where they get random people from who they know or anyone off the street to participate in studies about a subject or use people to test new medicine or try drugs on to see the results (Lisa Anderson, 2015). The user knows that they can be seriously hurt but they will get paid in the end. These tests could last for a week or for more than 6 months. So they would rather run the risk of DYING in order to get some extra money. 

Just goes to show how far people will go for money.

References:

Eunson, B 2012, Communicating in the 21st century, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Milton, QLD.

THE GOOD AND BAD ABOUT GREED, John G. Bruhn Available at: http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.cqu.edu.au/eds/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=3449bbd4-d6d4-4749-83b7-73d74a2b3e6d%40sessionmgr4003&hid=4113&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=pdh&AN=2012-18781-003&anchor=cpb-64-2-136-EDDA  [Accessed 08 April 2015].

greed - definition of greed by The Free Dictionary. 2015. greed - definition of greed by The Free Dictionary. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/greed. [Accessed 13 May 2015].

APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, text revision (DSM IV-TR), defines antisocial personality disorder (Cluster B).

Lisa Anderson, CQUniversity, 2015