Because most people are realists, they can only interpret rewards as a function of survival, not prosperity, simply because they don't regard prosperity as real. For that reason, most of the rewards systems that I see end up being incredibly ineffective in producing incremental increases in prosperity. By participation, I mean taking ownership of their positions, exhibiting belief in and commitment to a plan of action, understanding the importance of increasing personal productivity, and reconciling this behavior with an increase in their standard of living. The collective failure of an organization's workforce to actively participate, as defined above, is the explicit institutionalization of the law of scarcity in the land of abundance . I believe that the greatest price we pay as a function of having freedom in America is in the failure to understand it.
Freedom is prosperity.
To exercise that freedom you need to have the ability to reason your way to prosperity. To refuse the right to greater prosperity is to refuse understanding and reason in the name of reality. It is an explicit decision to suffer without reason. It is the job of leaders to connect reality to rationalism. I am not referring to the charismatic quality of a leader who compels the company to greatness through a magnificent vision.