Economic Growth through Societal Motivation

Economic engines are fostered through the patterns of human development and the creation of an environment that allows them to realize their fullest potential on the market. The economic system should encourage exploratory entrepreneurial behavior that leads to tangible rewards for societal members to ensure momentum continues to thrust forward. The same mechanics that apply to organizational motivation also apply to national motivation as each member determines whether or not they will engage the market with their skills and abilities. 

The book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty outlines how wealth is increasingly accumulating into fewer and fewer hands thereby retarding the financial growth of the middle class. Wealth distribution tied directly to performance helps to encourage greater levels of motivation and innovative ideation.  Higher performance should be encouraged throughout the layers of society to have the highest development of the economic system. 

Expectancy-Value Theory:  People will determine how much effort they are going to put forward to obtain goals. If the system doesn’t offer these rewards or if people are effectively blocked due to issues such as racism, religious bigotry, sexism, nepotism, corruption, or improper wealth allocation national motivation will decline. 

Path-Goal Theory: It is not enough to offer the rewards without offering the right rewards for the right kinds of activities. Employees that work hard, develop new products, and create better ways of conducting business have a right to increased income. The rewards must match the path to ensure the highest amount of effort.

Cultural Reward Systems: Each culture has their own embedded reward systems that encourages higher levels of motivation within that particular cultural context (Rosenblatt, 2010). Once the culture is set it will change the vantage points of societal members and influence what actions will lead to effective rewards that adjusts social intelligence and thinking. 

Skill Set Creation: To think, build, and produce requires the motivation to learn and develop. The system must reward employees who successfully complete training, obtain certificates, graduate with degrees, and improve their earning potential in some way. The closer learning is associated to current societal needs the higher the alignment of effort and skill. 

Ideation to Production: When good ideas are ignored only because they didn’t come from the “right” person with the “right” social connections the system suffers as less people learn to open their ideas to unjust criticism. Development of a nation requires the ability to explore various types of ideas from multiple sectors of society. 

Treaties and Agreements: Opportunities are based on the ability to sell products on the global market that obtain rewards for societal members. The types of agreements developed for trade and information sharing will determine the potential opportunities generated. The agreements influence the productive structure of a nation.

Wealth allocation should impact all segments of society to be effective. Developing a stronger society requires all-hands-on-deck through offering appropriate rewards, effective paths that help the greatest amount of people, the skill-set to produce, open-minded enough to accept new ideas, and having the international agreements in place to develop new opportunities.

The way the system operates and develops has a natural impact on the methodologies people use to make decisions. Every person uses judgments to determine whether or not additional effort will lead to increased rewards or other valued benefits. A lifetime of rewards, punishments, successes, and failures will determine the overall way in which a people think and becomes embedded into a nation’s culture. 

It is the entire system and its impact on the population that will determine whether or not a nation will succeed or decline or suffer the fate of history. Each member is surrounded by the factors of their environment and the way in which other people think that creates social perception as encased in culture. It is this cultural perception matched with appropriately pathways to success and tangible rewards that will determine if the system has the capacity to continue to grow in the future. 

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA. ISBN 9780674430006

Rosenblatt, V. (2010). Social axioms, values and reward allocation across cultures. Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings.

Book Review: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Dr. Thomas Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, delves into the new gilded age where a smaller percentage of people accumulate wealth while vast majorities struggle to make ends meet.  The trend is continuing as those who hold capital beyond their daily living expenses continue to become wealthier while the incomes of others have failed to rise substantially to keep pace.  Under current trends the problem will become more pronounced and possibly destructive.

The book discusses the history of wealth and how during World War I the top one percent owned approximately 1/5 of national wealth. That number has dramatically changed over the decades with a much higher concentration of wealth landing into fewer hands. Compounded wealth is becoming limited to fewer people highlighting income disparity. 

The gilded age comment shows how the capital of a society is owned by too few people and this is being passed on from generation to the next versus being earned on performance alone. This means that wealth is not actually earned and those who are influencing the economic system to the highest degrees are not necessarily the most skilled. 

Most theorists do believe we have problem with wealth distribution in society and the book does focus on this idea from an analytical point of view. There are many ways in which such an analysis can be conducted and academics may debate its scientific contribution to the debate.  It is a large issue beyond the bounds of a single work.

Scientific analysis is important but the real contribution is to open new questions, debate outcomes, or develop vantage points. How do we know if we have a problem unless someone thinks about it? This book furthers the argument that additional effort is needed to ensure the masses have real opportunities to succeed. 

A society, much like a business, must have adequate rewards within the system to help ensure that members are working toward the benefits of the nation and themselves. When such incentives no longer exist and excess capital cannot be individually accumulated motivation and trust decline. This creates a difficult situation relived over and over in the small country towns and sprawling cities of the country. 

To add to his arguments for wealth distribution small business has the potential to raise societal innovation, collective intelligence, and wealth on a more uniform level. The political structure is still focused on encouraging large corporations but with some well thought out adjustments both the small business communities and large corporations can both benefit. New opportunities create jobs and further societal motivation to learn, adapt, and develop.

Other Reviews: 

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/17/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-review

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/kapital-for-the-twenty-first-century

Poem: Small Wonders of Everyday California Life

Call for Papers: Sustainable Development in Business and Supply Chain Research Conference

Date: 27th to 28th November 2014

Location: London, United Kingdom

Brunel University:

ICSBS2014 is an important international gathering of those interested in business and economics, marketing, Logistics, transportation, supply chain and information technology. The focus for academics, researchers, lecturers and students is to attend best practices workshops and review new ideas in research.

Web address: http://www.icbtsconference.com/14808536/call-for-paper

Improving Robotics and Human Intelligence through Online Education

Human intelligence takes a heightened position in the modern age as the use of robotic rescue equipment offers emerging opportunities to enhance military capabilities. Human intelligence matched with robotic equipment creates stronger interfaces between the two that extends human capabilities. Petrisor, et. al. (2013) discusses how e-learning in a digitized battlefield creates cooperation between human and artificial intelligence in obtaining higher performance. 

The idea for developing learning and adapting machines was first introduced in the 1950’s by BF Skinner who wrote The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching as well as Teaching Machines. As a behavioral psychologist he developed a machine that not only was intrinsically rewarding to students but also rewarded them externally for correct answers. 

The use of machines as well as the platform by which students learn has radically improved. Online learning can do much more than Skinner’s early experiments and now integrates various forms of media, communication tools, and content to produce highly intensive programs for students to learn and develop.  

Online learning is a leading method of integrating various technologies to help operate military robotics. The ability to use information quickly, integrate technology, focus on managing and effectively controlling robots has been tested by the Robo-Security Min-robot Project with significant success. 

The world of robotics is present and we will need military members with high technological skills, theoretical knowledge, and virtual functionality to work within this field. Online education is seen as an important method of training military members who work in these fields and ensuring that they understand how their senses work with virtual information and physical outputs. Programs are still in their infancy and are still in the process of being developed. 

Petrisor, S., et. al. (2013). The robo security mini robot between contemporary military imperatives and the new educational paradigms. Paper Presented: The 9^th International Scientific Conference. ELearning and software for education.  Bucharest