Correspondent of the Day: Business Ideologues Have Led Us Astray

Business Ideologues Have Led Us Astray
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Popular U.S. culture, dominated as it is by business ideology, generally holds that aside from the primordial drives like hunger, thirst, sex, and survival, our motivation for work is driven only by material rewards and punishment.

The pervasiveness of this notion has created an environment of widespread scorn for people who work in activities outside of business enterprises. Insults which characterize dedicated government workers doing essential work as "parasitic bureaucrats" are all too common from doctrinaire conservatives.

But when we see genuine major-league looting of the economy by corporate executives, there is every effort by the power brokers not only to excuse them, but to give away the store -- arguing that their obscene rewards motivate for success and thus are well-deserved.

We all know now that these gargantuan compensation packages had nothing to do with any successes, but were awarded because the executives enjoyed unchallenged control over corporate decision-making and their assets. Perhaps, for those we have seen responsible for this economic calamity, we need to add another primordial drive category, psychopathic greed, where an individual cannot resist stealing from his own family without regard for its ultimate insidious consequences.

Contrary to those who hold these simplistic views of what it takes to motivate people, there are millions of us in health and human services, education, public service, in non-profits and in other professions and altruistic work who know different.

Daniel H. Pick, in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, lays it out. Much work and many other actions we take are not for money, power, or to avoid unwanted consequences. We do it because our work is interesting or because we are curious, or challenged, or have a burning desire to be creative, care deeply about what we do, or we know that it is work which has to be done and no businessman has stepped up.

The truth about us and our motives have been largely distorted by the Reagan revolutionaries who loudly proclaim that only businessmen can do anything right. The time is long overdue for our country to be reminded that there are many non-material rewards in good work for which the "invisible hand" of the market place is closed.

Edward H. Peeples.
Richmond.