The obvious, direct route to high performance management systems would
seem to be the discovery of those motivational wellsprings that drive
human action. Much thought and study have been invested in the search
for this key, but little theory of practical use to the invention of high
performance systems has been produced until recently. A brief review of
the more popular strands of motivational theory will help illuminate the
limitations of traditional theories and why the more basic, prosaic practice
of goal setting frequently works.

In its application to the workplace, motivation theory drew heavily on
radical behaviorism, especially so as enacted in the role of worker as robot
by Ford. Behaviorism as championed by B. F. Skinner simply ignored and
denied the influence of internal, intrinsic psychological factors, rejecting
with special contempt the notion of "mind" as the cause of behavior.
Mental processes for Skinner ( 1974) are only fanciful metaphors that, in
his reality, are better depicted as poorly understood complex contingencies
of reinforcement.

In an age of scientific management corrupted by Henry Ford into
worker-as-robot it was inevitable that radical behaviorism, with its insis-
tence on externalization of behavioral cause as the exclusive and final
source of human behavior, would dominate theories of motivation, espe-
cially as applied to the workplace. In Ford's production domain, the mind

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