Page 86 - Cambridge IGCSE Business Studies

Cambridge IGCSE Business Studies Section 2 People in business

Quality circles
KEY TERMS
Quality circles are groups of workers who meet regularly to discuss work-related
Quality circles: groups of issues. Workers come up with solutions to problems or suggest how improvements
workers who meet regularly to can be made. The results of quality circles are presented to managers and good

discuss work-related problems. ideas and solutions are introduced into the workplace. This approach is similar to

Team-working: organising Herzberg’s ‘responsibility’ motivator.
production so that groups of
workers complete the whole unit
of work. Team working and delegation
Delegation: passing ■ Team working – production workers are organised into groups or teams
responsibility to perform tasks and are given the responsibility for the completion of the whole task. For
to workers lower down in the
example, a team of workers might be responsible for the production of a
organisation.
complete car engine instead of individual workers completing just one small
part of it.
■ Delegation – this involves managers passing authority for the
performance of tasks to lower-level workers. It is often combined with

Delegation: see Chapter 7, empowerment – for example, allowing workers to make decisions about
page 92.
how tasks are performed.

ACTIVITY 6.7

Work in pairs to discuss the method(s) you think might be the most appropriate for motivating workers in each of the
following circumstances.
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1 A shop assistant who works in a large fashion outlet.
2 Workers on a production line where the level of faulty products has increased over the past three months.
3 A pizza delivery driver.
4 A marketing manager for a shoe manufacturer.
5 Someone who works as a bank cashier.
6 A car salesman.
7 A farm labourer.
8 A young university graduate who has worked for a company for 12 months.
9 Staff who work in the Research and Development Department of a cosmetics manufacturer.

10 A teacher in your school or college.

Choosing methods of motivation

We have seen that managers can use different methods to motivate workers.
However, there is no ‘best’ method of motivation. Managers must choose the
method that they think is best to motivate different types of worker. Th ey may

consider the following factors when choosing which method to use:

■ What is the cost to the business of using a particular method? Every method we

have discussed above will increase costs. Can the business afford it? Will the
benefit to the business of motivating workers be greater than the increase in costs