Need for a Substitute for promotion and other Factors

floor, workers in this age of higher education have severely limited promotional opportunities. A Fortune magazine study of 900 top executives found that less than 8 per cent had risen from the shop floor. When the study, asked only at managers under 50 years of age this parentage dropped to 5 per cent. If the workers have similar desires for advancement as do the managers, then, like the managers, these, desires may be increased by elaborate symbols devised primarily for managerial and not worker motivation. Their need for a substitute may be increased by these systems-as they are for the managers-and one form their substitute might take could be stronger demands' for wage increases and industrial recognition, e.g. in the form of trade unions. Professor Norman Hunt of the Edinburgh Business School quotes a survey of several hundred American companies which tried to assess the value of profit sharing as a means of promoting industrial peace. Of those companies practising profit sharing at all levels 9.9 per cent had experienced recent strikes, while 23.4 per cent of those companies not practising profit sharing at any level had had strikes. However, of the companies having profit sharing for managers only-an extra status differential-30.6 per cent had had recent strikes.

Need for a Substitute for promotion and other Factors
Numbers of Correlation Pr.obability
measurements coefficient

Status symbols
Difference in
Education

58

53

+0.19

+0.20

0.08

0.07

It would seem easier for firms setting up new plants