Please Rate my Analysis of an Issue

"Corporations and other businesses should try to eliminate the many ranks and salary grades that classify employees according to their experience and expertise. A 'flat' organizational structure is more likely to encourage collegiality and cooperation among employees."

,,No competition, no progress" a wise man once said. That notion determines our technological, cultural and scientific development since the beginning of mankind. Without competition, there would be no incentive for the student to educate and challenge the existing rules and boundaries, no stimulus for the employee to be more productive and creative and no reward for a manager to excel in his business. Although, there are still some businesses where there is no competition among employees and managers, I believe that modern corporations should always try to differentiate workers on results and contribution to the organization.
Firstly, a good manager always needs tools to motivate his team, to bonus the top workers and to punish the low graders. By applying a company salary grade system, such manager could easily give for example an extra salary to his most profitable team member and as a result would motivate the rest to make their best to keep up with the top performer. A study of Small and Medium Enterprises Association in Europe among employees in European Union provided statistics that 82 percent of the workers with salary grade system have voted as being motivated because of the specific salary policy compared to 38 percent of employees with equal wages.
Secondly, a company without job ranks and with flat organizational structure is more likely to have management problems with applying control on the working process. In such organization, one manager would be responsible for many employees with different expertise and various needs and tasks. It would be extremely difficult for him to monitor, control and motivate his staff. A vivid example was The Bulgarian National Railway Company where in 1991 a flat organizational structure was adopted for all departments and one general manager was responsible for the whole working processes. That manager was capable and had time to direct and control properly only the finance and accounting departments, while he had no experience in sales or supply. As a result, nearly all sales promotions of the Railway Company have been ineffective and the company faced a loss in 1991.
Last but not least, although some people state that without ranks and incentives workers would be more willing to cooperate with each other, I believe that competition is a human feature that is deeply innate in our personality and has nothing in common with cooperation and collegiality. Employees tend to help each other more often when they work in small teams, when they are satisfied with their job and when they are fairly evaluated by their supervisors. In a company, where a worker is equally assessed with no difference on his results or achievements, such a worker would be deeply unmotivated. Consequently, that employee would consider the company as unfair and would not be willing to cooperate with and help his colleagues. That situation occurred in a big steel production factory near Bucharest, Romania where nearly 50 percent of the employees resigned because the company had no assessment and evaluation policy. One of the workers there stated that being a top performer for the last 10 years in his department and receiving the same salary as anybody else in his production department, he felt disappointed and eventually a tension between his fellow workers appeared.
In conclusion, by creating salary grades in a company, a manager could be able to assess his workers more fairly, to motivate the staff more effectively and to organize the company process more productively. Different ranks among workers, do not separate team members but motivate them to compete and to achieve more in the company.

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