Week 12 — Same Pay, Different Effort: Diagnosing Motivation at a Neighborhood Bakery — Traditional alternative (no AI)
Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.
Assignment 11 of the term — price a raise, compare two workers' pay per hour, diagnose motivation with this week's theories, and explain it to someone new to business.
This week you learned why people put effort into their work: the classic theories of Taylor, the Hawthorne studies, Maslow, Herzberg, and McGregor, the contemporary theories of equity, expectancy, goal-setting, and Theory Z, and the job-design tools that put them to work. In this assignment you price a raise for one small bakery, compare two workers' pay per hour, diagnose the bakery with the theories, and explain motivation to someone who has never studied business. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Business Case Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles.
The task
The case is illustrative, built for this course and not real data. A neighborhood bakery has a counter clerk and two bakers. The pay is fair and the shop is clean and safe. The clerk does the same register work every shift, has never been asked for an idea, and recently told the owner the job feels the same every day. The owner wonders whether a raise would help. Like the coffee cart in this week's chapter, the case has no named people.
The bakery's figures, line by line:
- Counter clerk: 18 hours a week for 50 weeks a year.
- Raise the owner is weighing: 2 dollars an hour.
- First baker: 28 hours a week, paid 532 dollars a week.
- Second baker: 32 hours a week, paid 640 dollars a week.
Work these two problems, showing every step of the arithmetic:
- How much would the raise add to the clerk's pay in a year, in dollars?
- By how many dollars an hour is the first baker's pay per hour lower than the second baker's?
Beside each answer, add a brief interpretation:
- Problem 1: sort the clerk's situation into Herzberg's hygiene factors and motivators and say whether the case shows a motivator gap; then recommend one job-design tool, such as job enrichment or empowerment, say why it works on the motivators, and say how it connects to participative leadership or to decentralization.
- Problem 2: use equity theory to say what the first baker may feel, and name at least one outcome beyond pay, such as thanks or a schedule, that could change the comparison; then say which set of assumptions, Theory X or Theory Y, an owner who reaches for a raise and close supervision might hold, and why that describes the owner rather than the workers.
Explain it to a non-expert
A friend who works at a movie theater asks you, "My manager gave me a raise last month, but I still dread every shift. What's going on?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, why a raise can stop complaints without making a job satisfying, suggests one change that could help, and names one limit, including that the bakery case is illustrative and that every motivation theory is a classroom model, not a law. More than one good answer is possible.
For a different, ungraded example, imagine a volunteer at a community garden who says, "They gave me a free T-shirt and a parking pass, but I'm bored." Model answer: "The shirt and the parking pass make volunteering easier, so they take away reasons to quit, but they do not make the work itself interesting. What usually helps is getting a real say, such as choosing what to plant in one bed or teaching a new volunteer. That idea comes from a classroom model of work, so it may not fit every person. Ask the garden for one small responsibility and see whether it changes how the shifts feel."
Use that pattern for your friend at the movie theater, with your own wording and evidence.
Show your work. A reader should be able to rebuild every amount you report from the clerk's hours, weeks, and raise, and from each baker's hours and weekly pay, without guessing which numbers you used.
Deliverables
Submit a single report containing:
- the two answers, each with every step of the arithmetic shown and the interpretation the task names for that problem;
- your message to the friend, explaining why a raise can stop complaints without making a job satisfying, suggesting one change, and naming one limit; and
- a short list of the bakery's figures, giving the clerk's hours a year, the raise's yearly cost, each baker's pay per hour, and the gap between them, so your amounts can be checked.
Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.
Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled sketch of the clerk's hygiene factors and motivators with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.
How you'll be graded
The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.
Academic integrity and AI use
This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the arithmetic, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. You may use a free spreadsheet to lay out the bakery's figures. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.
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