In his introductory overview the author recognizes that his idea about the importance of social motivations is hardly new, and one might add to his list of predecessors Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of moral sentiments’. Yet he is right in claiming that instrumental motivations, i.e. rewards and punishments, have until recently been widely regarded as the mainsprings of human behavior.  This book seeks to clarify the nature of social motivations and to show ‘how to motivate cooperation in organizations’. I shall return to the significance of this phrasing.

The first two chapters are mainly devoted to the explication of ‘motivational models’, and in particular to distinguishing between instrumental and social ones.

Social motives are said to be of two kinds:  1.) individual dispositions including attitudes, values, identity, procedural justice, and trust; 2.) group-based policies and practices, and ‘group-based’ often seems to mean ‘managerial’. The author does not explain why the latter should be regarded as social motivations.

Then follow three empirical studies intended to demonstrate the dominant function of social motivation, and the corresponding chapters are entitled ‘cooperation’ with, respectively, ‘managerial, legal, and political authorities’. The first study consisted of the administration of questionnaires to a national (US) sample of participants; the second employed telephone interviews with a random sample of New Yorkers, and the third entailed a secondary analysis of data from a large pan-African sample. The data were subjected to regression analyses, and in each case the percentage of variance explained by social was greater than that accounted for by instrumental motivations. It is not possible to go into technical details here, but one might question the extent to which such an approach can really ‘measure’ motivations.

A further stage used path analysis to determine causal relationships between dispositions (type 1 above), social motivations (type 2 above), and instrumental motivations. It is claimed that social motivations play a major, and instrumental ones a minor role in shaping dispositions; this seems to imply that ‘the authorities’ do the shaping. The rest of the book considers the practical implications of the findings.

Let me now return to the phrase ‘how to motivate cooperation in organizations’ which describes one of the principal aims of the work, and this is confirmed by the chapter-headings referring to cooperation with ‘authorities’. In other words, the studies appear to be intended to teach ‘authorities’ how to make people cooperate with them, to conform and perform. This is not to deny that many of the recommendations for managerial practices are sensible or even high-minded, suggesting for instance the promotion of an ‘ethical culture’. Yet the fact remains that the ‘authorities’ are told how to create and manipulate people’s ‘dispositions’ — hardly a form of cooperation.

The scenario pictured of individuals simply interacting with organizations (which, incidentally, are also composed of individuals) is an unrealistic one, since it leaves out of account other elements like trade unions or political parties. Moreover, cooperation in voluntary organizations or informal groups, such as those pictured on the cover helping to push a car, is entirely ignored.

It will be clear by now that this book puts forward a rather odd conception of ‘cooperation’. Usually it is regarded as a phenomenon that goes back to the distant past of homo sapiens, when no formal organizations existed.  Yet the author is no doubt correct in his contention that while instrumental and social motivations operate jointly, the latter are usually more powerful. The importance of social motivations such as fairness is now admitted even by economists, who had long clung to their model of ‘rational man’.

© 2011 Gustav Jahoda

Gustav Jahoda, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. His main fields of interest are cross-cultural and social psychology, especially the development of social cognition. He is the author of A History of Social Psychology (Cambridge University Press).