Comment by class3shock

Slightly off topic but does anyone know if there are studies looking at the use of negative vs positive "reinforcement" on employees in order to increase productivity, reduce costs, whatever-metric-you-want-to-pick?

In my professional life I have never seen people respond well to cost cutting, layoffs, understaffing, corporate bs, etc. It is always demoralizing, resulting in reduced performance and I can only imagine worse outcomes for the company overall. But despite this I have never seen a company do the opposite and respond with offering incentives for better performance. I don't know if this is industry specific (I've mostly been in defense oriented companies) but was curious.