You get what you pay for.

In 1975, a study was conducted to examine the relative effect of antecedents and reinforcement in producing stable performance change.

In the initial part of the study, the experimenter reinforced 108 business college students for high-speed performance on a keypunch task. All subjects were subsequently subjected to a variety of experimental conditions.

To test the effectiveness of antecedents on performance he exposed half the students to persuasive influences such as a plea for increases in quality and an announcement that their pay would be heavily influenced by quality, the other half received none. To test the effectiveness of the reinforcement he varied the conditions under which they were paid.

During different phases of the experiment all the students were paid for either quality (accuracy of their work) or quantity (speed with which they keypunched cards).

The results were that the announcements and the plea for quality had no effect on the level of quality.

And, when they asked for quality but paid for quantity, they got an increase in quantity and a decrease in quality.

An when they paid for quality, they got an increase in quality, but no corresponding increase in productivity.

In other words, they got paid for, not what they asked for.

The report concludes:
"…from the current experiment. It appears that stimulus control procedures such as announcements (publicity campaigns) or verbal attitude influences (Zero defect lectures and workshops) are relatively ineffective in achieving changes in performance quality unless they are backed up by appropriate environmental changes.

Attitudes toward quality were not altered by the persuasive influence. Apparently, it takes new environmental outcomes to overcome old habits at the workplace.

This of course suggests that organisations might prudently forgo the expenditure of time and money that typically attends the initiation of a new ZD programme and concentrate instead on making meaningful changes in the outcome stated with work in order to encourage high quality performance."

Johnson G A (1975)