Buffini's Blog

1. People are motivated by factors other than money, provided that they get enough money

This has always been true. People will always suffer through short wages and privation if they feel that the environment and conditions are worth the lack of monetary reward. This entire section is focused on what the organisation needs to not only further its staff, but itself as by-product, and as a standalone development item. give staff the respect and self-respect they are entitled to, and you will begin to see a cohesive community being built.

2. Important motivation comes from the need for personal self-actualisation and social contact

It could be argued that almost all motivation ultimately comes from this need. Ultimately all of the goals, achievements, etc.. will boil down to some form of personal gain, even if its just personal satisfaction at seeing their team, or group, or family profit directly through their efforts. Self-actualisation, coupled with a need for society are major drivers, just as all motivational needs can in some way be linked to each other.

3. Personal development can be partly achieved by training to meet the employers needs

Following on from my previous statement, this fits in nicely. However, I’m not entirely happy about the connotations of the sentence. It seems to suggest that a person’s personal development is dependent on the organisation they work for, when in reality it is up to the individual. I know that in the context of what I’m studying it makes sense, I just like to nitpick sometimes.

4. Training must be supplemented by learning from experience, and socially from others within communities of practice

Decent point, basically it states that individuals cannot learn by study alone, experience, expert systems, feedback, peer communities, etc… are all required for proper development. This is true, and in a lot of cases people will accept the less formal ‘on the job’ training rather than the more formal and abstracted method.

5. Organisations are also motivated by the need to survive and grow within some wider rational and international economy

This is a wider extrapolation of the previous point. think of an organisation as a large organism, constituted by the cells of staff beavering away, learning and working within. Whenever more information is acquired and applied by one cell, it benefits that department, or system if you will, leading to overall benefits for the organism. Fitness to survive is the key here, and being able to learn and adapt are integral to this.

6. Modern economies are based on free markets which are, in turn, based on the exchange of private goods between free agents

Personally I tend to view the current global markets as closed rather than free. There is only a finite amount of physical resources available to push around to consumers, and it will not last forever. However, the concept behind the free market is good. Goods and services find their own price levels, and hold steady based on what the market will value. Cartels and monopolies are therefore a bad thing, choking trade and causing scarcity.

7. Markets adjust themselves through the signals of prices, interest rates, profits and wages to achieve optimal use of limited resources

Again on the subject of monopolies, the system only works when all agents are free, equal, and benevolent. Otherwise you get situations where competitors are choked out of business, commodities being offered at ridiculous prices, etc… The market needs to be monitored and regulated in order to work.

8. Markets fail when agents external to the transactions are also affected, either positively or negatively

This harks back to the idea of agents not directly implicit within a trade, but explicit from the internal actions, whereby a large monopoly organisation acquiring a smaller competitor indirectly harms the market by causing competition to break down and prices to rise, even though the market was not directly involved in this transaction.

9. People and organisations may operate outside the normal market within the gratis economy of voluntary labour and free use of products and services

Hooray for people! The gratis economy is basically people, or agents, giving time, money, work, whatever, to some other agent of whatever form for no return whatsoever. The OSS community is a prime sample, Ubuntu for example, and there are a myriad others out there doing similar works, Red Cross, NGOs, etc.. These actions not only bring needed commodities to those who need them, they help to regulate the free market by essentially being a free alternative to the pay options. The system works surprisingly well in this case, and long may it continue.

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