and career opportunity, and/or due to poor relationships with the managers. More
specifically:
Reasons why employees join:
Reputation of the company
Competitive salary
Challenging work
Promotion
Corporate cultureReasons why employees stay:
Challenging work
Competitive salary
High level of independence
Opportunities for promotion
Corporate cultureReasons why employees leave:
Lack of opportunities for promotion
Relationship with managers
Poor work-life balance
Work-related accidents
Non-competitive salaryIn order to retain qualified employees, other measures are necessary as well. The
management must align individual goals and organizational goals on a certain level.
At the same time, the management should invest in developing the employees’
skills and abilities and should delegate demanding assignments. In this way, both
parties profit and motivation remains high.
2.3.2.7 Motivation – A Myth?
While both Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Herzberg’s theory of motivators and
hygiene factors assume that the meaning and purpose of leadership is to influence
people and offer them an incentive to display a specific type of behavior, Reinhard
K. Sprenger, a best-selling management author and PhD of Philosophy, considers
this form of motivation to be a dead end.
To him, it is obvious that “motivation” means nothing more than the following
five factors: rewards, praise, bribes, threats and punishment. Leading with mechan-
ical stimulus systems, Sprenger claims, creates the opposite of motivation,
“demotivation.” I consider this conclusion to be correct and of central importance.
For this reason I would like to cover the central thesis and observations in the
following section, and provide commentary on each.
84 2 Occupation or Calling: What Makes for Good Leadership?