Team Production with Gift Exchange

Team Production with Gift Exchanges

Team production is influenced in many ways, one being with financial incentives. For example, in sales positions, people that sell the deals are given lump-sum cuts to compensate for their work. With that being said, the employees feel a need to sell deals to satisfy their own needs, not simply to help the company succeed. They are often also given extra bonuses for meeting their quarterly quotas. This would still somewhat work, however, if everyone working as a team on one specific deal receives the same compensation. This would insure that working together is necessary, and that everyone would hold each other accountable as one person wouldn't receive a higher cut for doing more work. This is similar to the 'marbles' article, except marbles would only disburse if everyone pulled the rope at the same time, and everyone would get the same amount of marbles in return regardless. 

At work, I need to look through a moral lens as opposed to a financial lens, especially when cleaning up at the end of the night. I currently work at a bar on campus, and the nightly clean-up can be brutal depending on the night. Some jobs are more difficult than others; some people need to mop floors while others wipe surfaces down and so on. Nevertheless, all these jobs need to get done before anyone is allowed to go home. If I was a young child, or was looking through a financial lens, I would wonder, "What is in it for me?" The idea of fairness is thrown around a lot during the shift's end, and I can't deny that I take part in that. Of course, I don't want to do the difficult jobs. Nobody does. However, it is the only way in which we can go home, and the more help we have, the faster it will go. There is no reward for doing more difficult jobs than someone else. Many choose the easiest jobs they can, and do them repeatedly to pass time, leaving it to others to step up. This is like if we were using the marble machine, and one rope is pulled much harder than the other, but the same amount of marbles come out. Clearly, it's not fair, but it is important for the team that somebody takes charge and mops the floor or cleans the bathrooms instead of sitting around and wiping the same surface over and over again. Selfishness can still occur here, though, as maybe, those that take the hard jobs are doing them simply because they want to go home sooner personally, as opposed to doing them to help their coworkers go home earlier, even though none of us go home unless it is all accomplished. Thinking about this morally, we can return to the marble machine, and the idea of sharing. If one was to want to work harder to help out the team, they would pull the rope harder, receive more marbles than the other rope (in this case the marbles can be minutes that you no longer need to be there), and split your winnings evenly with the other rope puller. This is bypassing the idea of fairness for the benefit of everyone. As said in 'The Power of Altruism' article, the moral motivations are much more powerful than the financial motivations. By doing so the work force involved will be more cooperative, more trusting, more effective, and more lovely. 

I still think in terms of fairness plenty. For example, at the same establishment, I was upset because my coworkers made much more money than I did in tips, yet I was still working as hard as they were. I felt as if I didn't deserve to put forth my effort if I was going to walk out with far less money than they did. Again, I was thinking with a financial and selfish lens, which makes sense as this type of thinking has become the normal way we do social analysis and how we perceive the world. Our natural, child-like tendencies are confirmed and have been followed.