1. A father decides to put his two sons to work landscaping. The business involves going to a customer’s
home and providing landscaping services (cut grass, edge sidewalk, pull weeds in flower beds, prune
bushes and trees, rake leaves). Rather than paying a flat wage, the father decides to pay an incentive
according to the following schedule (average across all lawns.) At the end of the second week under this
arrangement the boys are quarreling with each other and not happy with their dad. All of the
disagreements revolve around the incentive system. What might be the problems?
As stated in the current case, there was a couple of problems that led to the problems to arise between
the sons.
A couple of reasons are that there a difference in the incentive rates varying on the nature of the work.
It varies between both sons and has a changing income level for each brother. Since they have been
given incentives to do more work, it would demand higher output for them to reach the incentive. The
rate of their incentives is low, as compared to the rates charged for the customers also with how much
time they put into their work for their low pay. Varying on the time they invested on working one might
get paid less than the other, also varies on what work they can afford to do which might pay one more
than the other. The brother can also argue that they earn less than their father, so the pie is not evenly
split. So, the father should check how much work each son can do and then decide how they can be
compensated from the work they do.