{"id":29210,"date":"2016-01-22T01:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T06:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29210"},"modified":"2016-01-12T14:47:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T19:47:19","slug":"qotd-non-monetary-incentives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/01\/22\/qotd-non-monetary-incentives\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Non-monetary incentives"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8230; the free market flourishes when everyone, most of the time, refrains from taking advantage of each other\u2019s vulnerability.<\/p>\n<p>Many people, especially college professors, are surprised by how much honesty, reciprocity, and trust exist among those who engage in business. The biggest, most successful corporations in the world, such as Google and Apple, are renown[ed] for how much they trust their employees and how much independence they give them. (There are much smaller companies that do so, too.) A very successful entrepreneur I know told me recently that the key to running a large, profitable business is to treat your employees, suppliers, and customers with respect and like responsible people. It\u2019s just not possible always to be looking over someone\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>When you trust people to reciprocate that trust, you\u2019re taking a chance that they may take advantage of you. Such pessimism, however, means your relationships with other people \u2014 your suppliers, employees, and customers \u2014 will never have a chance to flourish. That\u2019s why it goes against your long-term interests to hunker down and never leave yourself vulnerable to opportunistic behavior.<\/p>\n<p>The incentive to treat people right by following norms of honesty and fair play is non-monetary, but it can make your business prosper. It seems that the best business owners aren\u2019t driven primarily by profit-seeking, although they probably wouldn\u2019t do what they\u2019re doing without earning that profit. No, the incentives they follow often have more to do with knowing that they\u2019ve done things the right way and so deserve all that they\u2019ve earned. (Which is why they can get very upset when a politician says, \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a business, you didn\u2019t build that.\u201d) That knowledge is something all the money in the world can\u2019t buy.<\/p>\n<p>Sandy Ikeda, <a href=\"http:\/\/fee.org\/freeman\/detail\/incentives-101\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Incentives 101: Why good intentions fail and passing a law still won\u2019t get it done&#8221;, <em>The Freeman<\/em><\/a>, 2014-11-13.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; the free market flourishes when everyone, most of the time, refrains from taking advantage of each other\u2019s vulnerability. Many people, especially college professors, are surprised by how much honesty, reciprocity, and trust exist among those who engage in business. The biggest, most successful corporations in the world, such as Google and Apple, are renown[ed] [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,41],"tags":[755,95],"class_list":["post-29210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-incentives","tag-jobs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7B8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29211,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29210\/revisions\/29211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}