Most executives have usually satisfied their basic financial needs. The challenge is to design management controls that simultaneously encourage continuous improvement and autonomy within current operaions, and yet are capable of adaptation to major discontinuities in the environment. Informal reward systems can do just that. The time has come for managers to consider the tangible tools and approaches for obtaining results in an organization that only a few years ago might have been considered too qualitative, abstract, and undefined to be taken seriously. Foremost among these approaches, is the use of informal rewards for motivating and encouraging individual performance that corresponds with the organization's goals.
Informal rewards are personal and flexible and thus, can be more widely used.
They can have greater impact in motivating more people and in helping to reinforce more formal organizational systems. With relatively little effort and expense, management can reap the benefits from an informal reward system that works in harmony with more formal reward programs to obtain maximum individual performance and productivity for the organization. References Cited 1. 8, No. 2, Spring 1989, p 161. 4.