Everything Old Is New Again…And Again…And Again
In 1971, I was in the 5th grade, so I probably had only recently learned how to spell management and leadership. That was also the year that J. Richard Hackman and Edward E. Lawler III published a paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology entitled “Employee Reactions to Job Characteristics.” Here is something they said about work motivation 39 years ago:
To establish conditions for internal work motivation, then, it appears that a job must: (a) allow workers to feel personally responsible for an identifiable and meaningful portion of the work, (b) provide outcomes which are intrinsically meaningful or otherwise experienced as worthwhile, and (c) provide feedback about performance effectiveness. The harder and better an individual works on such a job, the more opportunities he will have to experience higher order need satisfactions and the more incentive there can be for continued effective performance. Higher order need satisfactions, therefore, are seen both as (a) a result of (rather than a determinant of) effective performance, and (b) an incentive for continued efforts to perform effectively. (pp. 262-263).
Did you catch that last part? Read it again.
Hackman and Lawler’s proposition was based on the expectancy theory of motivation, which was introduced into the workplace by Victor Vroom in 1964.
I just finished reviewing another new book (that I will not name here) in which the author claims to have “discovered” through his several decades of personal experience and “extensive research” that the “secret” of employee performance is for leaders need to provide workers with responsibility, feedback, and encouragement.
I’m sure the book will be a best seller. I just about barfed.
The book was well written for sure, and everything the author claimed can be supported by research. The problem with this and so many other management “guru” books is that most of the evidence about what drives employee performance was around long before they published the results of their groundbreaking new study.
For too many management gurus and consultants, our ignorance is their bliss.
Related Posts:
Goal Setting: An Example Of Why It Is Not Easy To Practice Evidence-Based Management
About the Author: Bret L. Simmons
Welcome to my blog! Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section of my posts. I publish all constructive, non-anonymous comments. 
Bret,
You are sooo right! Great, succinct post that reminds those engaged or dabbling in leadership and management issues that many of the contemporary claims to new findings were written about decades ago. It reflects both the used car salesman tactic (love the photo) and a lack of historical understanding.
PS-I’m long past “barfing”
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
November 4th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Here is what’s really crazy, Jim. Most of this stuff has been in undergraduate level textbooks for decades. Anyone that went through B-school, and that should be LOTS of business leaders, should recognize it. This is not advanced stuff, it’s MGT 101. Thanks! Bret
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Hey Bret,
I completely agree with your gag reflex.
I don’t mind “old wine in new bottles” as a general practice– sometimes we need to have things re-said, or even repositioned, in order to be able to hear them.
What I *do* mind are the claims to originality. These claims sometimes make me wonder if the authors lack faith in their own ability to put a useful spin/hook on the older material, and lack faith in the usefulness of application/execution over discovery.
On another note though, when I re-read the last sentence of the quote, as you directed, I thought that you were going to talk about bad research (e.g., either it’s cause OR effect, when it actually it is both). (Again, as though it’s somehow better to argue input vs output, that to understand the positive cycle?)
As always, your s*%#-detector is much appreciated.
cv
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
November 4th, 2010 at 9:03 am
I totally agree about the claims to originality, CV. Bob Sutton has hammered this point in his books and on his blog. I don’t mind a guru telling us how to make this stuff work, but to not cite the research and think you invented it is maddening. Thanks! Bret
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It’s kind of funny. I read that quote and my knee-jerk reaction (before finishing the quote) was “THEY RIPPED OFF VROOM!” Then I read your next paragraph and realized that was the point. Reminds me of the new “law” by Bob Sutton: If you think you have an original idea, you don’t. Indeed, someone else thought of this first too.”
By the way, great picture.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
November 5th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
You are very well read, David
Thanks! Bret
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Bret, I just got back for New Zealand, and as they say there, good on you. Now, there are some reasons why claims of newness can help excite people, as it can crank up constructive compassion among people who believe they are doing something original and exciting (like teenagers who believe they have discovered sex). But as Bret and CV says, most ideas aren’t new. In defense of Hackman, by the way, he cited Vroom (in fact, Vroom was a senior colleague of both of them at Yale at the time). Also, as an aside, Hackman wrote the most amazing article I have ever seen by a management guru type… at the height of the Job enrichment fad in US companies, Hackman wrote an article called, I think, On the Coming Demise of Job Enrichment. Here I found it: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED109350&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED109350
P.S. One of the things that Jeff Pfeffer and I did when we were writing Hard Facts was to read through the “breakthrough ideas” HBR used to publish every year and try to find at least one that was actually original — we never did (including three of our own breakthrough ideas, including the no asshole rule).
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
November 5th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Welcome, Bob, and welcome back from WAY down under! Thanks for the link to the Hackman article. I hope people find your comment and take the time to download that article from 1974. Hard Facts is one of my favorite books, BTW. I wish more people would find and read it. Another book I wish more folks would read is “The Halo Effect” by Phil Rosenzweig.
I agree there is value in getting folks excited. Tom Peter’s “In Search of Excellence” ignited my passion for leadership, even though we now know the “research” was flawed. I bought several other Peter’s books after that one and never finished a one of them.
Thanks, Bob! Bret
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davidburkus Reply:
November 6th, 2010 at 9:20 am
So the circle is complete. Bret writes a post about how nothing is truly new that attracts Bob Sutton to comment. Bob also being one who had written earlier about how nothing is truly new.
I wonder now if Solomon will respond to Bob comment and remind us that he wrote that nothing is truly new back in Ecclesiastes.
But then who did he get it from?
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
November 6th, 2010 at 10:44 am
Never enough voices reminding us that nothing is really new. We are drowning in a river of snake oil, and that because we love it that way. Thanks, David! Bret
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love that used car salesman, reminds me of dad.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
October 6th, 2011 at 6:46 am
My dad sold used cars at one point. But that does not look like him. Thanks! Bret
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