How Leaders Generate Meanings For Monetary Rewards

Abstract

Scant research has focused on how to increase the value of monetary rewards when they are delivered by leaders to employees. Drawing upon the perspectives of sensegiving and sensemaking, this study explores how leaders generate meanings of monetary rewards perceived by employee recipients in organizational settings. Using a qualitative method design and analyzing qualitative data from 291 incidents, we found that in the distribution process of monetary rewards, sensemaking of employees included strong and weak instrumental meanings as well as symbolic meanings. The results show that leaders adopted a set of sensegiving strategies in distributing monetary rewards including emphasizing money gain/loss and utility, providing feedback, valuing employees, orienting toward the future, guiding values, and publicizing. In the presence of leader’s sensegiving, employee recipients endorsed more positive symbolic meanings of monetary rewards (i.e., recognition and respect). Our research offers a richer view of the role of leader’s sensegiving in making monetary rewards gain more value through employees’ sensemaking, and enriches understanding of monetary rewards, leadership, sensegiving and sensemaking.

Re-Positioning Customer Loyalty in a Fast Moving Consumer Goods Market

“…The idea that employees need to be satisfied and motivated in order to perform and be satisfied is thoroughly researched (Maslow, 1954; Hertzberg et al, 1959; McGregor, 1960; Zhao et al, 2016; Robson et al, 2016; Oerlemans and Bakker, 2018). But motivating employees is also considered to be complex since it is individually adapted, where different employees are motivated by different things such as social relationship (Lloyd and Mertens, 2018), authenticity (Taris and Van den Bosch, 2018), career opportunities (Van Vianen et al, 2018), salary (Shang et al, 2018) etc. From the HRM literature, we have learned that employees need meaning and motivation in their social life in order to be able to perform and contribute at their workplace (Maslow, 1954; Hertzberg et al, 1959; McGregor, 1960).…”

The interactive effect of organizational identification and reward type on reward valuation

“…However, this research has assumed the financial rewards to be cash and has not theorized nor examined whether the propensity to attach symbolic value differs between tangible versus cash rewards. This literature also tends to focus on how performance‐based cash rewards can be used to convey status and recognition that are valued by employees beyond the reward's instrumental value, and posits how distribution practices (e.g., the party giving the reward, the reasons the reward is given, the public nature of the reward giving, the number of recipients) can impact the degree to which employees attach such status‐related symbolic value to rewards (Mickel & Barron, 2008; Salimäki et al, 2009; Shang et al, 2018). This stream of literature has limited focus on how symbolic value of other dimensions is impacted by the relationship and emotional bond between the organization and the recipient (i.e., interpersonal‐related symbolic value).…”