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Many companies spend a great corporeality of time coin investigating the causes of employee turnover—for example, through programs of go out interviews. Usually the intent behind such studies is to detect out why people get out—the idea being that if a company can identify the reasons for terminations, it can work to hold terminations, and turnover, down.

While a company may obtain very valuable information from termination interviews, this kind of approach has 2 indicate defects:

i. It looks at merely one side of the coin—the termination side. If a company wants to keep its employees, so it should besides written report the reasons for retentivity and continuation, and work to reinforce these. From the viewpoint of a visitor'due south policies on employment and turnover, the reasons why people stay in their jobs are only as important as the reasons why they get out them. An obvious signal in testify is that one private volition stay in a job nether weather that would cause some other to get-go pounding the pavements.

Equally an illustration, consider the divorce rate. If one were really interested in doing something well-nigh it, he would have to understand why some people get divorced and why others stay married—the reasons for the two things are entirely dissimilar. Furthermore, the reasons for getting a divorce are not merely "but the contrary" of the reasons for staying in wedlock. He would have to do some real spadework on both sides of the fence to get a consummate motion-picture show of the divorce phenomenon. Equally, in the corporate setting, at that place are definite rationales for terminating and definite (although sometimes unconscious) rationales for continuing.

2. This arroyo also tends to presume a perfect correlation between job dissatisfaction and turnover. Many a company works for depression turnover considering it thinks a low charge per unit implies that its employees are pleased with their jobs—and, a fortiori, productive. This is non necessarily true, past whatever means. A low rate may just be the event of a tight job market. Or perchance the company has put gilt handcuffs on its employees through a bounty scheme that emphasizes deferred benefits. There are many factors involved.

In itself, the fact that an employee stays on a payroll is meaningless; the company must too know why he stays there. We shall bear witness, in fact, that some carelessly conceived methods of maintaining a low turnover rate can be detrimental to the fiscal health of a company and the mental health of its employees.

To get a more than integrated view of work-strength stability, we mounted a written report to investigate the motivations to stay and proper ways to encourage it. (The study is described in the sidebar, "Background of the Study.") This is the picture show that has emerged.

Why do employees stay? The brief answer is "inertia." Employees tend to remain with a company until some forcefulness causes them to leave. The concept hither is very similar the concept of inertia in the physical sciences: a body will remain as it is until acted on by a force.

What factors affect this inertia? There are two relevant factors within the company and also two relevant factors exterior the visitor.

Kickoff, within the company, there is the issue of job satisfaction. Second, there is the "visitor environment" and the degree of comfort an private employee feels inside it. An employee'south inertia is strengthened or weakened by the caste of compatibility between his own work ethic and the values for which the company stands. The employee'southward ethic derives from his own values and the actual conditions he encounters on the chore. The company'due south values derive from societal norms, formal decisions by the lath of directors, and the policies and procedures of the managing group. A widening gap between these two vantages weakens inertia; a narrowing gap strengthens it.

Exterior the company, ane must consider an employee's perceived job opportunities in other institutions. An employee's perceptions of his outside job opportunities are influenced by real changes in the job market place and by self-imposed restrictions and personal criteria. Nosotros found that some employees refuse to consider work in other locations because "I like the schools" or "I like my neighborhood." These reasons non merely strengthen inertia to stay with their nowadays organization, but also strengthen inertia to stay with any organization within the same school commune or neighborhood. Notwithstanding, if schools lose their entreatment because of drug problems or neighborhoods become run downwardly or polluted, the inertia to stay in the area is weakened, and, consequently, outside job opportunities become relatively more than attractive.

Also, outside the visitor, there are nonwork factors that straight affect inertia, such equally financial responsibilities, family unit ties, friendships, and community relations. Some workers told us, for example, that they would never go out their companies because they were born and reared in their present locale. Others said they stayed because they had children in local schools, could non afford to quit, or had good friends at work. Many of these employees also reported low job satisfaction—and yet they stay.

Does information technology thing whether an employee stays for job satisfaction or for environmental reasons? Yes, because it makes a significant difference to the company whether an employee "wants to" stay or "has to" stay.

How tin can retention exist improved? A company might do this by reinforcing the "right" reasons for staying. By "correct," here, we hateful a combination of job satisfaction and environmental reasons that jibes with the goals of the company. By "wrong" reasons, we would hateful whatever combination of reasons for staying that is beneficial neither to the visitor nor to the employees. Thus if a company reinforces the right reasons for staying and likewise abstains from reinforcing the wrong reasons, its turnover—as distinct from its turnover rate—might be more satisfactory.

How does a company reinforce the right reasons? Companies tin can do this by providing atmospheric condition compatible with employees' values for working and living.

If managements concentrate on understanding why employees stay, and then they tin can deed to reinforce the right reasons and terminate reinforcing the wrong reasons. In other words, they tin take a positive approach to managing retentivity, which will exist more effective over the long run than the ordinary, negative approach of but reducing turnover.

Satisfaction & Surround

Our study has provided iv profiles of employees that are particularly useful in thinking through the twin problems of employee retention and employee turnover. The two of import variables here are the employee's satisfaction with his job and the environmental pressures, inside and exterior his company, that bear upon his determination to continue or finish.

Reasons for job satisfaction include achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth, and other matters associated with the motivation of the private in his chore. Environmental pressures inside the company include work rules, facilities, java breaks, benefits, wages, and the like. Environmental pressures outside the company include outside task opportunities, customs relations, fiscal obligations, family unit ties, and such other factors. Exhibit I shows the relationship between job satisfaction and environmental factors for four types of employees, and also explains why each blazon stays.

Showroom I. Job Satisfaction and Environs

The turn-overs are dissatisfied with their chore, have few environmental pressures to go on them in the visitor, and will leave at the kickoff opportunity. While employees seldom offset out in this category, they oft end up here, having experienced a gradual erosion of their inertia. Consider, for example, an employee who a few years ago was highly motivated, had three children in higher, and was close to beingness vested in the company retirement programme. Today, his children are graduated, he is vested, and he has lost involvement in his job. His inertia to stay has been profoundly weakened, and he may shortly become a turnover statistic.

The turn-offs are prime candidates for union activities; they can hands generate employee-relations and productivity problems, and feasibly industrial espionage or sabotage. These employees are highly dissatisfied with their jobs and stay for mainly environmental reasons. For example, they may feel they are too old to commencement over again, or that they are financially dependent on the company do good programs; or they may believe they can't go a job on the outside. Employees trapped in this category take two alternatives: (1) they tin can look for outside aid (for instance, from unions or the EEOC); and (2) they tin can change their behavior and either "practice exactly what they are told and no more" or make up one's mind to "get even with the company."

The plow-ons are highly motivated and remain with the company almost exclusively for reasons associated with the piece of work itself. This is about desirable from the company's viewpoint because these employees really want to stay and are not locked in by the outside environs. However, if managerial actions reduce job satisfaction (even temporarily), turnover may rise dramatically. Since the inertia of the plow-ons is not strengthened past environmental factors, it is therefore not strong enough to brand them stay without continual job satisfaction.

The turn-ons-plus are the near likely to stay with the company in the long run. These employees stay for job satisfaction plus ecology reasons. Even if task satisfaction temporarily declines, they will probably stay. The discussion "temporarily" is a key 1, for if job satisfaction drops permanently, these employees go plow-offs. This transformation will non raise the turnover statistics, but it will increase frustrations and affect piece of work functioning.

Movement between classifications

The traditional approach to measuring and understanding terminations has focused on the turnovers. These employees generally correspond a relatively small percentage of the total employee population, and hence emphasizing them exclusively tends to ignore the reasons the majority stay with the company. It besides ignores the dynamic processes past which an employee moves from one classification into another.

Consider a immature engineer who originally joins the company because he really wants to work there. He moves into a new city where he has very few ties with the community. As he develops his career, he begins to build some meaningful work relationships—he becomes a turn-on. The longer he remains in the locale, the more likely he is to become a turn-on-plus.

But suppose a time comes when his motivation is low. Will he leave? If benefit programs have created a financial dependency, if he has stock options that are not exercisable for two or three years, if he has children who are in good schools, if he has just purchased his dream house—then he probably will non get a turnover statistic. Withal, he may become psychologically absent-minded—a turn-off. The consequences may show upwards in alcoholism, chronic physical or psychological illness, divorce, low productivity and motivation, and possibly unionization.

Suppose, instead, that this same engineer has continued to find task satisfaction. He may nevertheless stay for some environmental reasons, and the combination of reasons will probably exist right—both he and the company find his employment fulfilling.

In neither case has he become a turnover prey, merely in that location is a dramatic difference betwixt the 2 situations in terms of morale and productivity. Ane management observer has phrased information technology this way: "We have too many people in our organization who are no longer with us."

One purpose of our research is to empathize better the residue betwixt job satisfaction and environmental reasons as information technology affects employee memory and to gain insight into ways to influence that balance.

Who Stays & Why?

One way to approach the question of residual between job satisfaction and environmental reasons for staying is to wait at the traditional demographic breakdowns, such equally male/female, salary/wage, college/high school education, and other demographic contrasts, and also at employees' personal piece of work ethics. We designed our inquiry to answer questions like these:

  • Practice managers stay for reasons different from those of nonmanagers?
  • Is the work ethic of younger employees different from that of older employees?
  • What kind of employees (male, female, exempt, nonexempt, and and then on) stay because they like their work?
  • What is the work ethic of those employees who stay because they like their job?
  • Why do managers over 40, who have not had a promotion in five years and don't like their chore, stay with the company?

Our respondents gave many reasons for staying. We have cleaved these downwards into reasons relating to the surroundings outside the company—the external environment—and reasons relating to the work environment itself, inside the visitor—the internal environs. Further, nosotros have cleaved downward the reasons relating to the internal surround into (a) motivational factors and (b) maintenance factors.

Exhibit II represents these 2 breakdowns. Each row of symbols in the exhibit is divided into three parts:

Exhibit II. Number of Motivational, Maintenance, and Environmental Reasons for Staying, Among 12 Employee Classifications

1. Motivational factors in the company environs.

two. Maintenance factors in the company surroundings.

3. Factors in the external environment.

To set up Showroom Two, we took the ten reasons for staying cited most oft by the members of a specific employee group and assigned them to the iii categories only listed. For example, employees with college degrees most oftentimes cited vi relating to on-the-task motivation, iii relating to job maintenance, and one relating to the environs external to the visitor.

The exhibit shows that depression-skill manufacturing employees stay primarily for maintenance or environmental reasons, many relating to the nonwork environment. Seven of their top x reasons relate to the external surroundings—for example, "I wouldn't want to rebuild the benefits that I have now" and "I have family responsibilities." Their 2 outstanding reasons for staying that chronicle to the internal environment are fringe benefits and job security. These employees will not remain on the payroll because of job satisfaction. To them, factors outside the company are more of import.

The reasons managers and professionals gave for staying were significantly different. Equally Exhibit II shows, managerial and professional person employees stay primarily for reasons related to their work and the piece of work surroundings; six of the top ten reasons they cited for staying were related to job satisfaction, three to the company environs, and only one to the outside environment. These data suggest that managers and professionals are more probable to be plough-ons, while low-skill manufacturing people are very probable to be turn-offs.

The moderately skilled manufacturing employees and the clerical people who are not direct involved in the production process more closely resemble the managers and professionals in their reasons for staying than they practice low-skill manufacturing people. However, virtually organizations tend to care for all manufacturing employees alike in terms of benefits, working weather, supervision, and pay. This study suggests that many skilled hourly employees would be less dissatisfied and more productive if they were treated more well-nigh every bit managers are, rather than equally low-skill blue-neckband workers are.

In the involvement of assessing equal opportunity, nosotros compared whites with nonwhites amid hourly employees. Nonwhite minorities cited maintenance and environmental reasons for staying more frequently, without mentioning a single motivation factor amid their top ten reasons. Caucasians too tend to stay because of maintenance and ecology reasons, although, for this group, the motivational item "I enjoy my job" ranked eighth as a reason for staying, every bit compared with seventeenth for non-whites.

People with less than five years of company service were compared with those with five or more. Employees with shorter service stay for internal reasons, their inertia being strengthened past a combination of task satisfaction and the job setting. However, after five years of service, environmental reasons begin to announced, while internal reasons tend to slip in relative significance. In other words, as in the case of the young engineer, these employees bring together a company because they want to. However, as they build family and economic responsibilities, these may displace internal reasons for staying.

A similar relationship was found in educational levels. People with a bachelor'southward (or higher) caste stay because of motivation and maintenance reasons, whereas people without a higher caste tend to stay for maintenance and environmental reasons.

Skill & nonmotivational factors

Given the traditional managerial belief that educational level represents a meaningful distinction among employees, we examined the influence of maintenance and external surround on people at various skill levels.

Exhibit III shows the percentage of employees, by skill category, who selected various environmental reasons for staying with their companies. These figures highlight the varied degrees of significance people with different skill levels place on environmental factors:

Exhibit III. The Effects of Environmental Factors on Employees at Various Skill and Job Satisfaction Levels

  • Depression-skill employees feel bound principally past benefits, family responsibilities, the difficulty of finding another job, personal friendships with coworkers, loyalty to the company, and simple financial pressures.
  • Moderate-skill employees experience roughly the aforementioned, but they seem somewhat less sensitive to environmental factors. Loyalty to the company, however, was cited more frequently.
  • Managers offer quite a unlike profile. They stay mainly for reasons related to their jobs themselves and community ties; the difficulty of finding some other job, family unit responsibilities, and visitor loyalty exert relatively less influence on them.

Hence there seem to be existent differences in the importance the three groups attach to environmental factors. Additionally, we might annotation that managers are more than willing to look for new jobs, fifty-fifty though this may be difficult, whereas the low-skill workers tend to exist unwilling to practice this. Information technology seems that "perceived outside opportunities" should be interpreted narrowly with respect to the low-skill classification.

Chore satisfaction

Exhibit Iii also shows the significance of environmental factors for employees with unlike degrees of job satisfaction. These data bespeak that very dissatisfied employees continue to stay considering of financial considerations, family unit responsibilities, lack of outside opportunities, age, and, to some extent, "corporate enculturation" (they wouldn't want to expect for a task or have to learn new policies). Such reasons for staying are self-defeating and inappreciably could be considered correct. These turn-offs have non yet affected turnover statistics, but however they may be having only as severe, or even a more severe, effect on the company. These employees see themselves equally so locked in by the environment that they have little alternative but to stay; and, therefore, the possibility of reduced productivity or behavior antagonistic to the organization is great.

Historically this locked-in, turned-off status has been considered feature of manufacturing or unskilled-labor categories, primarily. However, recent reports of increased union interest at the managerial level suggest that information technology is occurring at college levels of the arrangement besides. One study shows that alienation is not limited to the hourly ranks, but may occur at any level of an system.ane

Why Dissatisfied People Stay

Nosotros gained some insight into why an employee stays with a company when he is dissatisfied with his job, supervisor, benefits, pay, and then on. We found that employees who said, "I don't like my job," or, "I don't enjoy working with my supervisor," stay primarily for maintenance and environmental reasons, mostly related to fiscal and family responsibilities. The only "within the company" reasons high on the listing related to benefit programs and job security. These employees are fantabulous examples of personnel who have not affected the turnover statistics but who may have left the company, psychologically, long ago.

This finding illustrates the fact that the reasons people stay are non necessarily the contrary of the reasons why people leave. Ane often hears negative statements about supervisors and jobs in get out interviews; yet, of the employees nosotros studied, many who fabricated such statements are still with the companies virtually which they complain. These are the turn-offs.

Moreover, information technology suggests that these employees do not have as much task mobility as many companies assume. The old platitude that "if you don't similar the task, you are costless to leave" is virtually as naive every bit telling a monkey in a zoo that if he doesn't similar his bananas, he should go back to the jungle. The reinforcement that environmental factors give to the inertia of these alienated employees must exist quite powerful, and it will probably accept a strong force to suspension their inertia—in extreme cases, discharge.

It might exist concluded at this signal that level in the organization, race, tenure, education, and degree of job satisfaction determine why people stay. However, we found a gene more than potent than whatever of these—namely, the work ethic of the people involved in the written report.

An Employee's Piece of work Ethic

Man beings exist at unlike levels of psychological development, and these levels are expressed in the values they concord respecting their piece of work. One useful categorization of levels and work values appears in the sidebar, "Values for Working."

Exhibit 4 tabulates the peak 10 reasons employees stay, based on their psychological level. It shows a startling dichotomy. Employees possessing relatively loftier tribalistic or egoistic values stay mainly because of environmental reasons, whereas employees with relatively high manipulative or existential values stay primarily for within-the-company reasons, many of which are motivational. We also found that the tribalistic or egoistic employees are located primarily in the low-skill manufacturing functions and that manipulative or existential employees are located primarily in management, enquiry, or professional positions.

Exhibit 4. Number of Reasons Why Employees Stay, for Different Levels of Work Values

Although not all the implications are clear at this betoken, it seems apparent that corporate managers, in deciding on policies and philosophy, in reality have been talking to themselves about themselves. That is, they tend to adopt policies and theories of human motivation that appeal to their ain private value systems, nether the assumption that all employees take similar values. For example, many a manipulative manager presumes that money and large, status-laden offices motivate other people in the same fashion they drove him to his present level of success. He may have climbed the corporate ladder, but every bit our results clearly testify, for many employees the ladder does not fifty-fifty be.

This is not meant as a criticism of managerial value systems, but as a description of reality. I can look leaders, whatever their values, to prefer policies which about entreatment to their own value arrangement. An private makes a decision based on what he thinks is right. What is right depends on his values.

To put the affair another style: most managers are post-obit the Golden Rule, "Exercise unto others as you lot would have them do unto you." Assuming all people accept the same values, then what is right for the manager is right for the employee. All the same, since values of people are not the same, what is right to the manager is ofttimes wrong for the employee. If we were to write a Platinum Dominion, nosotros should say, "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them." This rule has obvious value for a manager who seeks to reinforce right reasons for staying, at diverse value levels, and to avoid reinforcing incorrect reasons.

We further explored job retention and values by linking data on values and reasons for staying. This enabled usa to determine the values of those people who stay considering they like their jobs and those who said that their jobs were non reasons for staying.

We found that employees who stay because they like their jobs tend to be relatively manipulative and existential; and those who go on for reasons not directly associated with their jobs tend to be tribalistic and egoistic. We as well institute that the tribalistic and peculiarly egoistic workers were relatively more dissatisfied with motivation factors than were employees with other value systems. The least dissatisfied employees had existential values, followed by the manipulative and conformist employees. This is not too surprising, considering the fact that the free enterprise organization tends to reward conformist and manipulative values, and existential people stay just equally long as they are happy.

Surround & values

Exhibit V demonstrates once more the subconscious ability of environmental factors. Information technology presents the percentage responses of employees scoring the highest (ninetieth percentile or greater) in each value system—that is, the employees who fit near conspicuously into each value organisation.

Exhibit V. Value Systems and Ecology Factors

The information show a dichotomy between employees with relatively high manipulative or existential values (Levels five and 7) and other employees, especially those with relatively loftier tribalistic or egoistic values (Levels 2 and 3). Almost without exception, people of Levels 5 and 7 place less emphasis on external ecology reasons for staying than do people with other values.

Thus whereas age, length of service, type of work and skill level, race, and teaching describe who stays, and for what reason, the underlying value organization explains why. Merely can we, as managers, actually use these facts to improve employee memory? Is there a positive approach to keeping people that is more effective than focusing on the negative chemical element of turnover? Our position is "Yep, there is."

Toward Managing Retention

Because managers accept habitually concerned themselves with turnover, it volition exist hard to break the habit. However, managers must stop the rituals of finding out why people leave and start investing resources in the positive management of retentiveness. If managers reinforce the right reasons for employees staying and avoid reinforcing the incorrect reasons, they cannot but amend traditional turnover statistics but set goals for retention. Yet, they must begin to understand and respect employees as individuals with values that differ from their own.

As a prerequisite to the development of a program to manage retention, certain difficult questions must be answered:

  • Why do employees stay?
  • What are their values for working and for living?
  • What are their ages, sexes, marital statuses, and then on?
  • What are the right and incorrect reasons for employees staying in their jobs?
  • How dissatisfied is dissatisfied?

We take obtained some quantitative insight into the first iii questions, but the last two may not have a quantitative solution. What is "correct" or "wrong," and how far an employee may be pushed before he is forced to go out, are moral questions. For these we offer our value judgments.

Ideally, information technology seems that the goal of managing retention would be to create conditions compatible to the turn-ons-plus—that is, some balance betwixt job satisfaction and environmental reasons. This raises some questions. For case, if employees who practice not similar their jobs stay because of the "locked-in" features of benefit programs, should managers not consider changing do good programs to reduce inertia?

To begin with, managers might brand pensions highly portable, a measure that would tend to reduce inertia but raise costs. To balance this, information technology would and so be necessary to improve the weather for satisfaction and so that people stay because they want to, not considering they must.

Another influence on inertia is the location of a company. For example, a corporation that locates a new factory, offices, or laboratories in towns that are not highly attractive or requires the relocation of many employees has weakened inertia; thus employees are more than likely to get out when they go dissatisfied with their piece of work. Some compensatory maneuver may be called for. Again, corporations which locate plants in small-scale towns, and describe primarily from the people who were built-in and reared in those communities, are building in inertia that tends to increment retention and decrease turnover—perhaps too much so.

For another attribute, consider corporations with headquarters in New York City. They may detect their employees accept very depression inertia because it is easy for people to simply go off the subway at a different cease, or even get off the elevator at a different flooring, and find themselves in a different corporation. That is, they tin can change jobs without changing their outside environment. In this instance, inertia to stay with the present employer may be very weak, only at that place might be strong inertia to stay in the same full general locale. Naturally, in working toward this balance, companies will have to devote some careful idea to the question, "How dissatisfied is dissatisfied?" for its employee groups. Suppose one sets upwards a calibration of chore satisfaction from +x (very satisfied) to –10 (very dissatisfied). Will an employee get out when the level is –5? Theoretically, mayhap, he volition; but realistically, the reply depends on the strength of inertia.

For instance, if the "golden handcuffs" are set with diamonds, in the form of stock options which are exercisable at some distant point in the future, then inertia is strengthened—that is, until the options are exercisable. At the date of exercise, his inertia will driblet to a very low bespeak, other things being equal; and even if his level of job dissatisfaction has remained constant, it may now be peachy enough to break the nowadays inertia level. One time inertia to stay has been broken and the person is in motion on his way out of the company, it will accept great force to counteract his momentum to exit.

One can also observe examples where an employee has stayed with a visitor well across a point where he has a sense of achievement and meaning in his work and is waiting but for early retirement. He has probably become a trouble to the system, to himself, and to his family unit. Lucrative early-retirement programs (sometimes known equally late discharge programs) have go increasingly pop as a means to interruption inertia, ofttimes to the do good of both parties.

The furnishings of inertia, of grade, are not limited to the employee, but also extend to his or her spouse. It is not uncommon to find an employee returning to the dwelling house town considering the spouse is dissatisfied with the nowadays locale.

In seeking remainder, then, it would be useful for a company to review all benefit, pay, location, and other environmental factors, likewise every bit job satisfaction, to make up one's mind whether people are staying for the right or wrong combinations of reasons—always keeping in mind that what is right and wrong to management may not have the same degree of rightness and wrongness to the employee.

Ultimately, rightness and wrongness, any their specific definitions for individuals in a given visitor, volition crave the provision of a piece of work environment that is broadly uniform with the employees' personal goals and their values for working and living. Managers demand to recognize that the "average employee" is only a concept, and develop personnel programs, policies, and procedures that are responsive to the disparate values of employees.2 Merely then is it possible to develop strategies and reinforcements for employees to stay for reasons that are right for both the arrangement and the private.

Toward Existential Management

A new piece of work ethic is emerging in this club. If organizations resist recognition of the change in values for working, stick with a single approach to people, retain the concept of the boilerplate employee, and continue to snap on golden handcuffs, then:

  • The new generation may not even enter those organizations, merely create its ain (or take over existing ones).
  • Present employees who are locked in and turned off may seek tertiary-party intervention to guarantee their right to task satisfaction, or their existent freedom to leave.

Most organizations historically have been and still are created and perpetuated past manipulative and conformist philosophies. If management wants employees to stay for reasons that are correct for the individual, the corporation, and the society, information technology must develop existentially managed organizations that truly accept and respect people with differing values. The approach we have taken in this article, while absolutely a "first cut" at only 1 aspect of the problem, may exist useful to managers who have recognized the need for broader views of employment policy.

1. Alfred T. DeMaria, Dale Tarnowieski, and Richard Gurman, Managing director Unions? (New York, American Management Association, Inc., 1972).

two. See our commodity, "Shaping Personnel Policies to Disparate Value Systems," Personnel, March–April 1973, p. 8.

A version of this commodity appeared in the July 1973 issue of Harvard Business Review.