Reference no: EM132893092

1. Read the case and answer the following questions:

John Douglas is a sales manager at an electronics goods store, who occasionally relies on punishment to try to improve the employee performance. Once, a salesperson was having a poor sales record for couple of months. John tried to motivate him and guide him to improve sales result, but nothing worked out. At one point, John got very angry, he screamed at the employee and told him that his performance was unacceptable. Then he threw a notebook binder at the sales person. After such incident, the sales person did well on that week and sales record was better. John is unapologetic about his rude behavior and says it is alright to show such rudeness once in a while. When the pressure of meeting deadline and target is high, some managers across the globe use punishment as a strategy or threats to improve performance. Their logic is, punishment is sometimes needed to provide the desired outcome when some employees are unaware about their poor performance. Some managers even use public embarrassment to push employees to perform well.

Now, answer the following questions:

a) As a future manager, can you justify the use of punishment to improve performance?

b) What are the disadvantages of using punishment in the workplace? Explain.

c) If you have to work under a boss who uses punishment, how would you feel? What will be your behavior or response?