6A the university daily kansan
news
thursday,april 8,2004
Tunnel of horrors
Annie Bernethy/Kansan
Nick Medved, Overland Park sophomore, and Melanie Bonny, Overland Park junior, acted out domestic violence for the Multicultural Resource Center's Tunnel of Oppression yesterday at Hashinger Hall. The tunnel was designed to show different forms of oppressive actions through audio and acting.
Ford wants hybrid-buyer tax break
The Associate Press
NEW YORK — Ford Motor Co. chairman and chief executive Bill Ford Jr. said the government should offer $3,000 tax breaks or possibly boost taxes on gasoline to spur consumer interest in gas-electric hybrid vehicles.
Ford's comments yesterday were a reaffirmation of views he has previously expressed and come as his company is investing heavily in more fuel-efficient vehicles.
He said incentives such as tax breaks or rebates of $3,000 per vehicle would be most effective.
He also mentioned his past
support of an additional 50-center-gallon tax on gas, which he said would make fuel economy a purchase motivation for the customer.
But he said he wasn't prepared to say now how big a tax hike might be appropriate and acknowledged such a tax increase "doesn't have legs" in the political arena.
"I'd like to get either federal or state and local help ... and I think it's the responsible thing to do," he said. "If the federal government really wants to encourage this kind of behavior — and they should — then that's a way they can clearly help."
Ford's remarks came to automotive journalists at the New York International Auto Show even as the nation's second biggest automaker announced it was increasing to three from two the number of hybrid vehicles it will offer in the next few years, adding, another sport utility vehicle.
Ford will build a Mercury Mariner hybrid SUV for the 2007 model year.
The Mariner will join the Ford Escape SUV and a future midsize sedan in the automaker's hybrid program.
system allows the compact SUV to get 35 to 40 miles per gallon in-city driving, compared with 20 miles per gallon in a 2005 Escape with a V6 engine.
The Escape hybrid, to be built at Ford's plant in Claycomo, Mo., will be for sale this summer. Ford says its hybrid
Hybrids draw power from two different energy sources typically a gas or diesel engine combined with an electric motor.
For now, the only versions available in the U.S. are small cars made by Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., but nearly every automaker is investing in hybrid technology.
in trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Ford shares were off 33 cents to close at $13.67.
Professor studies work motivation
By Joshua Kendall
jkendall@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Businesses like Sears and Affinitas, a telemarketing company with a branch in Lawrence, set goals for employees by tempting them with rewards.
A study conducted by James Guthrie, professor of business, is helping businesses learn how monetary rewards, or incentives, influence group goal commitment in a team environment.
Sears offers a percentage of every item sold as commission, said Marcus Skala, former Sears clerk and recent KU alum. For example, a big screen television pays employees a 12-percent commission while a phone is 0.5 percent, Skala said.
"This didn't motivate us to work harder, but it made us become cuttroth," Skala said.
The body of research, known as goal setting, was shaped by Guthrie's mentor Ed Locke, professor of leadership and motivation at the University of Maryland in the mid-1960s. Guthrie's approach took previous knowledge of goal setting and investigated how programs such as group "pay-for-performance" affect an employee's commitment to a goal and their performance levels.
Guthrie said it was important to note that a goal without goal commitment would not influence performance.
In almost all previous research, Guthrie said, researchers have assigned goals to participants. He was interested to see how a reward would affect a group without the presence of a mandated goal, like the situation at Sears.
"If humans are goal-oriented creatures, as many believe, then why wouldn't they be more likely to establish goals for themselves in the presence of reward opportunities?" Guthrie said.
Catherine Schwoerer, professor of business, said that people can only be coerced to follow goals to a point. Mandated goals by employers force people to comply with, but do not raise, commitment. The process is neglected and the goal is never internalized, she said.
Teams are more apt to follow through with goals when they are set either on their own or in conjunction with management, Guthrie said. By setting a specific target and an incentive, productivity and commitment to that goal is heightened, he said. Guthrie also thought that individual goals in tandem with team goals foster both individual performance and group cooperation.
A simple goal to "do your best" doesn't promote the same caliber of commitment, whereas a goal to increase the teams' sales by 20 percent will more likely improve performance. Guthrie said.
Skala said that if Sears had placed the team first instead of the individual, it was in the best interest of everyone to stay committed to the goal.
"If there is no reward for any sort for a goal, then there is absolutely no motivation," Skala said. "It doesn't necessarily have to be money, but no one does anything for nothing."
Goals are always focused on outcomes, Schwoerer said. When the outcome is the only emphasis, you may not get the process you want to see.
"Most of the time people hung around the televisions and vacuums because they were the items that gave you the highest percentages," Skala said.
The choice of what to reward in a business context is critical, Guthrie added.
"A primary principle in psychology is that behavior that is rewarded tends to be repeated," Guthrie said.
—Edited by Kevin Flaherty