Motivational muddles, recycled conventional wisdom and straw men in Malaŵi: Comments on Carr, MacLachlan, Kachedwa and Kanyangale (1997)
✍ Scribed by Peter Blunt; Merrick L. Jones
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 101 KB
- Volume
- 9
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0954-1748
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In their paper entitled The meaning of work in Malaw à i', Carr, MacLachlan, Kachedwa and Kanyangale (1997) criticize expatriate managers in Africa, and empirical and theoretical research which has been conducted on questions of work motivation in Africa, on several grounds. First, they quote with approval Munro's (1996) observation that international writers on African organisations' and senior expatriate managers' (MacLachlan, 1993) have explained instances of low productivity solely in terms of worker limitations (indolence, lack of aptitude etc.). Apparently psychologists have warned' of the proclivity among Westerners for this sort of thing Рthat Westerners tend more than others to blame behaviour on people rather than circumstances', presumably meaning that what is perceived by Western managers to be unsatisfactory performance is attributed to characteristics in the worker rather than to the nature of his or her circumstances which, according to Carr et al., may include aid and development settings'.
This loosely connected series of assertions is said by the authors to be the guiding logic of their empirical study: `the present study therefore aimed to investigate work motivation in one particular African nation, Malaw à i'. How this intention is reconciled with the fact that in much of their article they are at pains to point out (not very clearly) the dierences between work motivation and the meaning of work Рthe latter being included in the title of their article Рis not explained. That is to say, in some parts of their article Carr et al. appear to be arguing that work motivation is not a very useful concept, and that the meaning of work is better, while in others (as in the above quotation) their statements belie this. We refer Carr et al. to Blunt (1983) for a comprehensive discussion of these notions.