Employed by most religions over the eons to motivate people to act in ways that meet their purposes is man's propensity for lust for it is a given, we are told, that it will leave one blind, diseased, sterile, insane, or all of these, if not dead, unless yielded to in only the narrowest of circumstances.
Love (hate), not to be confused with lust, although they are often easy to confuse, is a good behavior modifier, but is it as good as fear? Love, not lust, actually has an element of rationality about it because true love presumably is the result of knowing another deeply, acutely aware of his or her faults and virtues, but nevertheless still being drawn inexorably to the other person more by reason of a rational assessment over a protracted period of time rather than raw sexuality. Fear, on the other hand, is perhaps the human trait that has undergone the least amount of change over the millions of years of human evolution and is therefore our most basic and perhaps our strongest animal instinct.
But consider the workplace, especially today. In an effort to achieve unreasonable financial goals, meet wildest corporate objectives, or realize historic profits, which of these aspects of human nature do employers manipulate to influence an employee's behavior to such an extent that the employee would cast his or her morality to the winds, lie to loved ones, take totally irrational risks and generally behave in ways otherwise completely out of character? Will use of fear, lust, or love (hate) influence behavior in such ultra-extreme ways? No, they can be too easily abandoned when the going gets really rough. The strongest motivator of all in this setting, however, which is neither fear, lust, nor love, is well known in the workplace today and routinely used to achieve outlandish corporate goals and influence employees to take patently irrational risks. It is undeniably what has produced the greatest crash of the global economy since the so-called Great Depression. It is very simply unmitigated greed! For it is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil, says the good book (Timothy 6:10) and it is a well worn truism that every man has his price (Sir Robert Walpole).
Greed then is the greatest behavior modifier in corporate America today and comes too frequently in the guise of corporate bonus compensation programs. Nowhere is this compensation technique more insidious than in investment banking where bankers are provided a relatively small base salary (generally subsistence level for the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed) and astronomical bonuses (often in the many millions of dollars for a single deal) which, importantly, are only paid if the outrageous goals are achieved. Because of the potential size of these so-called success bonuses, employees, be they CEOs or investment bankers in the trenches, will take unconscionable risks (e.g., shocking hedge fund transactions, unscrupulous packaging of sub-prime mortgages, etc.), abandon all sense of ethics, (e.g., Enron, Global Crossing, etc.), or use whatever cutthroat tactics are required to get the job done. This is what happened on Wall Street to produce the great recession of 2007-2010 that has reverberated around the world.
The Bonus is a novel which tells the story of one struggling investment banker who gets caught up in the dark world of a big corporate financing deal for a world class oil company. The bonus he will receive on the successful closing of the deal will set him up for life, but his harrowing journey to the financial closing provides ample evidence of the devastation that such corporate bonus compensation programs can wreak.
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