Beautiful fall, wish it was like this more of the year.

I love this time of the year. No more heat waves, it’s cool & comfortable to go outside in jeans & a sweatshirt, & above all (because I am an OSU fan) it’s football season!

Especially this time of the year when the leaves on trees are changing color and while driving out in the country coming to & from my parent’s house I get lost in the beauty of nature. I get to reminiscing playing in the woods at the end of my grandparent’s street with my brother when we were little. I also remember playing in our neighborhood with all the neighbor kids, jumping in leaf piles, playing tag, and climbing trees. Then I get to thinking about the environment. I do a little bit here and there to help out and I always feel bad when I go to the grocery store because I usually use the plastic bags, but now try to mix it up a bit & reuse the bags.

While reading Vaidyanathan & Aggarwal (2005) I realized that my employer, last week, did exactly as they described as the ‘foot-in-the-door’ technique (Snyder and Cunningham, 1975; Uranowitz, 1975; Seligman et al., 1976; Burger, 1999). My employer passed out to everyone reusable cloth bags for groceries with the hope that we would use them instead of the plastic & paper bags. My employer, like most, used that also as a way to market themselves. By us using the bags with the company name on it, they would get the company name out there more.

What do you do to help the environment?
Any tips, small or big, that can be done at home?

Vaidyanathan, R., & Aggarwal, P. (2005, December). Using Commitments to Drive Consistency: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Cause‐related Marketing Communications. Journal of Marketing Communications, 11(4), 231-246. Retrieved October 18, 2008, doi:10.1080/0144619052000345600

What works for me

Any one else find that carrot (or money) dangling there as an attempt to motivate you by your employer not as strong as a motivation as they try to make it? Like Jeremy Bentham’s “carrot on a stick” approach (Shah & Shah, 2007). Or am I alone on that thought?
Shah & Shah (2007) discussed the attitude motivation and the competence motivation and the more reflection that is done to work situations the incentive bonuses (for us the hottest phones) as motivation attempts to renewing customers contracts with us is not as effective as it is for some of my co-workers. It is clear with representatives why corporate wants us to renew contracts and upgrade anyone who is eligible, but that sort of incentive is not effective for me.
The greater motivation is the drive to get better at my job, to be good at it, and perform consistently at a high quality - competence motivation. Knowing that I am not quite where I need to be, per our quality department & management, is very frustrating and inspires me to do my best. Where the struggle is at is dotting every ‘i’ & crossing every ‘t’ on 100 percent of the time. Most the time it is accomplished, which demonstrates that the knowledge is there. Plus several times the compliment is give, from my customers, how great my service is and how informative and helpful I am. Every call, every day I learn from my experience and focus to perform better each time.
Anyone else find it easier to relate to these theories or have discovered what may help motivate you in work & life?

Shah, K. & Shah, P. (n.d.) Motivation. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.laynetworks.com/Motivation.html.

Who would have seen this coming coming?

When I started using instant messengers (IM) and email I would have never thought that the applications would be as acceptable in corporate America. Email and IM have become convenient tools to communicate with employees and management around the office and world. The technology has been recognized as such a valuable asset to the workplace that it has become common place in the office. Over 80 percent of the companies around the world use take advantage of the benefits of IM (Warisse-Turner et al., 2006).

I found the most significant information in the articles was the exposure of the positives and negatives of the applications. Understanding those allows me to recognize when it is beneficial to the task at hand to utilize them. I discovered that it is best to use either one when the task is non-social emotional related. Depending on the number of employees needing to be involved and how time sensitive the task is would also determine which to use. Groups that used computer-mediated communication found benefits using this method and were more comfortable to participate without feeling like they were being judged (Bordia, 1997).


References:
Bordia, P. (1997, January). Face-to-Face Versus Computer-Mediated Communication: A Synthesis of the Experimental Literature. Journal of Business Communication, 34(1), 99-120. Retrieved October 4, 2008, from Business Source Complete database.
Warisse Turner, J., Grube, J., Tinsley, C., Lee, C., & O'Pell, C. (2006, July). Exploring the Dominant Media: How Does Media Use Reflect Organizational Norms and Affect Performance?. Journal of Business Communication, 43(3), 220-250. Retrieved October 4, 2008, from Business Source Complete database.