Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

October 18th, 2011 by zen

An research-based look at human motivation by Dan Pink:

Interestingly, the direction of corporate/billionaire driven Education Reform runs counter to most of this, being centered in strongly Taylorist ethos of micromanagement and continuous quantitative measurement, rote and synchronized usage of teaching scripts and routines, with the intention of erasing autonomy of both teachers and students. Standardized competence, set at a level of basic skills, is their systemic learning objective rather than mastery – for which they wish to charge the taxpayers a boatload of money. #EpicFail.

Posted in 19th century, 21st century, academia, cognition, counterintuitive, economics, education, psychology, science, society, theory, Uncategorized | 7 comments

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  1. Cheryl Rofer:

    October 18th, 2011 at 3:25 pm

    More basically, this is the end of "economic man," that abstraction that follows the carrot/money.

  2. JonH:

    October 18th, 2011 at 3:57 pm

    Please don’t tell my boss about this… I like monetary incentives…

  3. zen:

    October 18th, 2011 at 3:57 pm

    I think it is the incorporation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. More $ did not cause Michael Jordan to be a better basketball player – by contrast, he voluntarily accepted underpayment to achieve other kinds of personal satisfaction and cooperative goals that weere more important to him than the next million

  4. zen:

    October 18th, 2011 at 3:58 pm

    Jon – just tell him that your more basic needs are not satisfied yet 😉

  5. Fred Leland:

    October 18th, 2011 at 7:24 pm

    The Book by Daniel Pink "DRIVE" gets into this even deeper. Its a great book  http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1318965767&sr=8-3 

  6. MM:

    October 18th, 2011 at 9:17 pm

    Open source – old time religion in Silicon Valley, since Microsoft was a monopoly in the 1980s. Actually the purpose and mastery parts are what drove many Silicon Valley companies to start and motivate many working in them. It’s called "cool."
    BUT, all those purpose driven companies were funded by VCs with 110% profit motives. In the end Sun Mico (Open Source) is gone. "Closed, for profit companies" Oracle, HP, Apple, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, Applied Materials … are the ones left standing.
    The best and the brightest in SV were always paid huge bonuses, ot they left and went to the next company. For a time recently Apple, Google, and others had a "no poaching" agreement, for just that reason.
    Purpose and mastery make a job fun and exciting – and make employees work harder, duh. Stop paying them big salaries and stock options on the IPO, of the next stock split, and they go somewhere else, too.
    I thought Skype was just sold to Microsoft – and that they fired all their sr. management just before the sale so that they would not have to share the $. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-19/skype-fires-executives-avoiding-payouts-after-microsoft-buyout-closes.html
    "Money talks, bullshit walks" – old Silicon Valley Saying ….
    MM@shooteyeout

  7. Purpleslog:

    October 18th, 2011 at 10:10 pm

    I thought Maslow’s and tHoN was depreciated for ERG theory…which is a bit flater. Clearly, Maslow has better PR and tHoN makes for a better a meme.